Are public bid software projects not bonded? I'm in construction and do federal contracts two or three times a year. Sure they must take the lower bidder but they discourage fly by nights and 'race to the bottom' type companies. Lots of these rules couldn't really be applied to software except for requiring bonds. After my company wins the bid but before we can start work we must put the amount of cash our contract is worth into something like an escrow account, and if we don't meet the terms of the contract then that bond if forfeit to the general contractor or client so they can hire someone else to do the job. Like I recently installed some coolant pipes for a mini data center on an air force base. My company won the deal with a contract for 83K$, so we pulled 83K$ from our bond account and put it into an account designated by the contractor, and the contract has a bunch of benchmarks like equipment setting or inspections we must reach on a very specific timeline, and lots of other stuff like requiring us to have 3 pipefitters on the job site every weekday for the duration of the project.

I always imagined federal contracts for other stuff would have similar requirements. Like a detailed plan of what the software should look like and what functions it will have, and what dates the different sections of software will be semi functional and then complete. If they required a bond they'd still need to accept the lowest bidder, but if the lowest bidder can't perform as well as they said they could in the contract, they're the ones who'll lose their ass and the government won't have lost any money(just time). This would encourage more cautious legitimate companies to bidding and should scare away those fly by night contractors who could lose out on quite a bit.