I agree completely and it's a poorly written article. However, it's been my experience that far too often in government/big business you wind up with a project that costs millions of dollars that could have been pulled off by two hackers, ~200K and an infinite supply of caffeine.

It could be claimed the vagueness of the contract leads the writer to think the company will do it on the cheap (if they don't allow scope creep). Maybe it will cost the company 1 million somehow, but ultimately it shouldn't cost even that.