> That would dramatically improve quality of service...
I find this doubtful.
> ... and simultaneously reduced government expenses.
I find this almost tautologically impossible. By and large the government (my corner of it anyway) doesn't pay extra for licenses to commercial software. The idea that we could somehow find and hire enough developers to rewrite the entire Microsoft ecosystem, and somehow do it for less than it costs us to pay for Office 365 every year, requires some serious justification.
> By and large the government (my corner of it anyway) doesn't pay extra for licenses to commercial software
No, but governments often do (under policies that have a built-in, explicit preference for COTS or MOTS solutions because [in terms of public rationale] they are presumed to be especially cost-effective) pay for commercial software that's not well adapted to the specialized circumstances of government agencies, which even when broadly similar to public actors are often significantly governed by unusual or even sui generis considerations applying only to government or to that particular government jurisdiction or even only to that particular agency of that particular government. And then pay extra (either in terms of custom modifications or business process adaptations to the poorly-aligned software) for the mismatch.
In some cases this has knock-on effects, because managing the government cost ends up with the government requiring (explicitly or practically because of the requirements of interfacing with the proprietary system) encouraging trading partners, including intergovernmental ones with the same kinds of business fit issues, to use COTS/MOTS solutions from the same vendor.
Maybe I misunderstood. What tools do you think the government should be building in house? If MS Word isn't something you're advocating that we rewrite in house, then I don't understand what you're advocating that we don't already do.
I find this doubtful.
> ... and simultaneously reduced government expenses.
I find this almost tautologically impossible. By and large the government (my corner of it anyway) doesn't pay extra for licenses to commercial software. The idea that we could somehow find and hire enough developers to rewrite the entire Microsoft ecosystem, and somehow do it for less than it costs us to pay for Office 365 every year, requires some serious justification.