The problem is not lowest bid (which few government contracts are any more, AFAIK), but the fact that government contracting is its own domain of expertise (actually, often a separate domain for each state plus the federal government, and even many local governments) separate from the kind of work actually being contracted for, and there are in any field a very small number of players (compared to the field as a whole) that have developed expertise in the "winning government contracts" domain (and, in IT, IBM is one of them, at essentially every level of government.)

  Of course you can pay more.

                      -- Oracle