There are two issues here that argue in favor of the government's approach: who says hiring people will be any better or quicker, and whatever happened to the idea of open source? No one gets paid for committing code to an open source project, and no one should suggest that those who do are "losers." You'd need to implement the same kind of safeguards against cronyism with paid people as with volunteers, you'd still have to train them, and they'd still have a nearly impossible task. The issue isn't money (Congress actually allocated money to hire people); it's where and how do you recruit the best people. I'm not so sure asking for volunteers is the worst way of going about this, as I argue further here.
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There are two issues here that argue in favor of the government's approach: who says hiring people will be any better or quicker, and whatever happened to the idea of open source? No one gets paid for committing code to an open source project, and no one should suggest that those who do are "losers." You'd need to implement the same kind of safeguards against cronyism with paid people as with volunteers, you'd still have to train them, and they'd still have a nearly impossible task. The issue isn't money (Congress actually allocated money to hire people); it's where and how do you recruit the best people. I'm not so sure asking for volunteers is the worst way of going about this, as I argue further here.