What Building In-House gets wrong in Government
Government agencies that attempt to build technology in-house face procurement and civil service constraints that make assembling a qualified engineering team extremely difficult. FedRAMP-qualified engineers, FISMA compliance architects, and engineers with the security clearances required for classified or CUI environments are in high demand from contractors who can offer more competitive compensation than civil service scales allow. The result is that in-house government technology development is typically staffed by engineers who are not in the top tier of the talent pool that the work requires.
The alternative — small government IT offices supervising contractor-built systems without the technical depth to evaluate what they are receiving — is the model that produced the government technology failures that the DOGE review is now cataloguing. In-house government technology capability has been systematically underinvested because the procurement model made it easier and politically simpler to issue contracts than to build internal capability.
FedRAMP authorization for a government-built system requires the same compliance architecture as a contractor-built system — and the same engineering expertise to implement correctly. A government in-house team that has not built a FedRAMP-authorized system before will make the same architecture mistakes that any team building these systems for the first time makes. The remediation happens before the authority to operate is issued.
What we deploy instead
We provide government agencies with the engineering team that civil service recruiting cannot assemble at the speed that modernization programs require. FedRAMP, FISMA, and NIST 800-53 compliance engineered into the system — not documented in a parallel workstream.
Fixed-price contracts with defined technical deliverables. Full IP transfer at close. Your agency operates the system independently after close.
FEDRAMP and STATERAMP built into the architecture from day one — enforced automatically by ALICE at every commit.
Fixed-price engagements. Production system in 8-20 weeks. No discovery phase. No change orders.
Domain-qualified engineers with government experience. The senior engineer who scopes the engagement is the senior engineer who delivers it.
Full source code and documentation transferred at close. No licensing. No managed services dependency.
The compliance difference
FedRAMP, FISMA, NIST 800-53, StateRAMP. Government technology compliance requires engineering teams who have built these systems — and the compliance architecture to prove it at the authority to operate stage.
What switching from Building In-House looks like
Government technology engagement: 12-20 weeks. Team: 8-14 engineers with government compliance qualification. Fixed price. Full IP transfer.
Architecture review and scope definition. We review existing deliverables and identify gaps.
Scope locked, team assembled, first sprint underway. Working code from week two.
First production milestone — a working integration or system component, not a document.
Full IP transfer. Source code, documentation, operational runbooks. Your team runs the system.
Failed Vendor Recovery Playbook
Step-by-step framework for recovering from a failed Building In-House engagement — from emergency stabilisation through full re-platforming. 4-phase playbook covering stabilise, assess, transition, and normalise.