This is hilariously ignorant, especially when it comes to France.
There are a ton of open source government projects from various agencies and contributing universities - from the government SSO (https://github.com/france-connect) to the Covid contact tracing and health pass management app (https://gitlab.inria.fr/stopcovid19) to the tax code to the unemployment app to a million other things (https://code.gouv.fr/sources/#/awesome). And all of them are good, usable, and (almost always) with permissive licenses.
Why hire an external vendor that has to add a profit margin, and lose the competency when that vendor changes for the next contract, or become a hostage to them? You literally can only lose.
There are a ton of open source government projects from various agencies and contributing universities - from the government SSO (https://github.com/france-connect) to the Covid contact tracing and health pass management app (https://gitlab.inria.fr/stopcovid19) to the tax code to the unemployment app to a million other things (https://code.gouv.fr/sources/#/awesome). And all of them are good, usable, and (almost always) with permissive licenses.
Why hire an external vendor that has to add a profit margin, and lose the competency when that vendor changes for the next contract, or become a hostage to them? You literally can only lose.