That's not entirely true. In Virginia, the distinction between "Invitation for Bid" and "Request for Proposal" is important. For IFB, you the spec is hard and fast, and the contract is strictly awarded to the lowest bid. For RFP, this is not the case: you can make multiple awards, there is a negotiation phase, you do not have to award to the lowest bid, etc. It is actually rather intelligent, as far as public purchasing vehicles go. The issue is usually that people still tend to become overly bureaucratic even with RFPs, and, well, public employment does not necessarily select for the brightest sparks. Still, in general, if the RFP doesn't spec it, you tend to not offer it.

The usual Big Government Contract gig (actually any "Big Contract gig" -- government is hardly monopolistic of Big Business) is to offer a service that you know is less than the customer needs but satisfies the stated spec, with the full knowledge that it will be easier to increase the contract than rebid it down the road. You might make some hand-wave of "we can do these things too if you want" just to make the potential customer feel good, but that's how it works. Make just enough money on the stated contract to cover the costs, but expect to *really* make the money on the overruns, add-ons, etc, that come later. Standard practice, and NG is one of the best at the game.

To a great degree, the public sector folks are either ignorant or complicitous. After all, the primary reason government entities outsource is to give business to (taxpaying) companies. It's strictly political. Competence of service and value are very much secondary (in fact, seldom is it cheaper). The larger agencies (and higher ed, for example) usually can have at least as much competence as the Big Contractor. However, in many cases the smaller agencies really are better served by Big Contractor, because they can seldom attract enough really good people.

Sorry, that's just the reality. It is both better and worse than most people realize.

So don't implement MS formats. That's where the standards come in in the first place. There are some "gotta do"s like SMB, but wherever possible just ignore their obscure proprietary formats.