Building Software for Government: What Nobody Tells You

I was in the operations room when a Coast Guard crew used our voice AI to locate a vessel in distress. The audio quality was terrible. The accent was unfamiliar. Background noise from their helicopter. The system had to work anyway - and it did. That's different from optimizing ad clicks. Building software for government taught me things that no startup experience ever could.

The problem is that FedRAMP authorization takes 6-18 months and costs $500K+ - and that's just the beginning. Most tech companies avoid government work. The contracts are complex, the sales cycles are long, and the requirements seem designed to prevent innovation. But if you can navigate it, government work offers something rare: users who genuinely depend on your software for life-and-death operations.

Updated January 2026: Added ATO Moat analysis and Monday Morning Checklist.

The ATO Moat

Compliance is not a cost. Compliance is a monopoly engine. The harder it is to get in, the harder it is for competitors to follow.

• FedRAMP authorization: $500K+ and 6-18 months. Your competitor cannot shortcut this.
• FISMA compliance: Continuous monitoring, annual assessments, documented everything. Your competitor cannot fake this.
• Cleared personnel: Security clearances take 6-12 months. Your competitor cannot hire around this.
• Contract vehicles: GWAC, BPA, IDIQ - once you are on, competitors must wait years for the next one.

Every barrier to entry you survive becomes a barrier to competition. The vendors complaining loudest about government bureaucracy are the ones who cannot clear the bar. The vendors winning government contracts are the ones who turned bureaucracy into a competitive advantage. This is not a bug. This is a moat.

The Procurement Reality

Selling to government isn't like selling to enterprises. It's a different universe:

I've watched this pattern destroy teams. I'm trying to save you the same pain.

RFPs (Requests for Proposal). Government doesn't call you asking for a demo. They publish detailed requirements, and you respond with equally detailed proposals. Often 50-100 pages of technical specifications, compliance attestations, and pricing breakdowns. This takes weeks to prepare.

Evaluation periods. Your proposal goes into a black box. Evaluators score it against criteria. You don't get feedback. You don't know how you're doing. Weeks or months later, you find out if you won.

Protest risk. Losing bidders can protest the award. This freezes everything while the protest is adjudicated. I've seen contracts delayed by a year due to protests from competitors who never had a chance of winning.

Budget cycles. Government operates on fiscal years. According to Brookings research, if money isn't spent by the deadline, it disappears. This creates strange purchasing patterns - frantic spending in September, nothing in October.

The process frustrates everyone involved. Government buyers want to move faster but can't. Vendors want simpler contracts but don't get them. But the process exists because government has to be accountable for public money. Every dollar spent has to be defensible.

Security Is Not Optional

Government security requirements make enterprise security look casual:

FedRAMP. To sell cloud services to federal agencies, you need FedRAMP authorization. According to GAO reports, this means independent assessment against 300+ security controls. It takes 6-18 months and costs $500K+. There's no shortcut.

FISMA compliance. Systems handling federal data need to meet FISMA requirements. Continuous monitoring. Regular assessments. Security plans. Incident response procedures. All documented, all auditable.

Classified environments. Some government work happens in classified networks that aren't connected to the internet. Development is different. Deployment is different. Everything is different. You can't just push code.

Supply chain scrutiny. Government cares where your code came from. Who wrote it? What countries were involved? What open source dependencies do you use? Who maintains them? Questions that most commercial customers never ask.

The first time you go through FedRAMP, you question every life choice that led you here. By the third time, you understand: these requirements exist because adversaries are actively trying to compromise government systems. The paranoia is warranted.

Users Are Different

Government users aren't like typical software users:

They're mission-focused. A Coast Guard watch stander doesn't care about your UI framework. They care about finding the vessel in distress. Every feature is evaluated against "does this help me do my job better?"

They're skeptical of new technology. They've seen vendors come and go. They've seen hyped solutions fail. They trust what's proven, not what's new. Your pitch deck means nothing; your track record means everything.

They're incredibly knowledgeable. These people have been doing their jobs for years. They know edge cases you've never imagined. They'll find problems in your software that your QA team missed. Listen to them.

They can't just switch. If your software doesn't work, they can't just switch to a competitor. They're stuck with what the procurement process selected. This makes them demanding up front - they're choosing something they'll live with for years.

The best government users become partners. They want your software to succeed because it makes their job easier. They'll invest time in feedback, testing, training - if they believe you're genuinely trying to help them.

The Stakes Are Real

In my government work, I've seen what happens when the software matters:

Search and rescue. Coast Guard using voice intelligence to locate a distressed vessel. The audio quality is terrible. The accent is unfamiliar. Background noise from their helicopter. The system has to work anyway—turning voice into actionable intelligence when seconds matter. Accuracy benchmarks mean nothing when you're transcribing distress calls over VHF radio. Success means people go home to their families. Failure means they don't.

Disaster response. Emergency management coordinating across agencies during a hurricane. Hundreds of radio channels, thousands of communications, patterns that indicate where help is needed. The software has to surface the right information to the right people fast enough to matter.

Border security. DHS analyzing communications for threats. The volume is massive. The signals are buried in noise. False positives waste resources. False negatives let threats through. The accuracy requirements are non-negotiable.

When a startup's software fails, customers complain and maybe you lose a deal. When government software fails in these contexts, the consequences are measured in lives. That changes how you build.

What Government Work Teaches You

Building for government improved how I build software for everyone:

Documentation matters. Government requires documentation for everything. System architecture. Security procedures. Operations manuals. Training materials. After building these for compliance, you realize how much better your commercial software would be if you documented it properly too.

Testing has to be rigorous. You can't ship bugs to government and patch them later. The deployment process is too slow. The stakes are too high. This forces you to test thoroughly before you ship - a discipline that benefits all your customers. Technical debt in government systems isn't just expensive—it can be dangerous.

Reliability is a feature. Government systems have to work at 3am on a holiday when no one is around to fix them. This forces you to build systems that don't need constant babysitting. That's good engineering for any context.

User feedback is gold. Government users will tell you exactly what's wrong with your software in painful detail. This feedback is invaluable. Take it seriously.

Government Readiness Scorecard

Assess whether your company is ready to build the ATO Moat:

Whether You Should Do It

Government work isn't for everyone. Consider it if:

Your software solves a real government problem. Not "could be adapted to" - actually solves. Government has specific needs. If you're forcing a fit, you'll fail.

You can survive long sales cycles. 12-24 months from first contact to revenue is normal. You need runway to wait this out.

You can handle compliance costs. FedRAMP, FISMA, cleared personnel - these cost real money. Budget for it or don't start.

You want users who genuinely need your software. The engagement is different when users' jobs (or lives) depend on your system working.

Avoid it if:

You need fast feedback loops. Government can't iterate quickly. If you need to learn fast, sell to startups instead.

You can't handle bureaucracy. The process will frustrate you constantly. If that frustration will drive you to quit, don't start.

Your technology isn't mature. Government isn't a good place to find product-market fit. They want solutions that already work. Be ready for technical due diligence that's more rigorous than anything commercial buyers will demand.

"Your users are doing important things. Your software helps them do it better. That's a privilege most tech companies never experience."