In most technology companies, build versus buy is framed as a speed decision.
Which path gets us to market faster.
Which costs less in the short term.
Which helps us hit this year’s plan.
In GovTech, that framing breaks down fairly quickly in reality.
After spending years operating inside a GovTech company that grew through multiple acquisitions, I’ve come to see build versus buy very differently. In public-sector technology, it is not primarily a product decision. It is a clarity decision, constrained by capacity.
When the destination is clear and the organization understands what it can realistically absorb, both building and buying can work extremely well. When either is missing, even strong products struggle to add up to something customers trust.
Why GovTech Changes the Build vs Buy Equation
GovTech operates under a different set of rules than commercial SaaS.
Customers are more risk-averse.
Procurement cycles are longer and more structured.
Compliance history, institutional trust, and incumbency matter as much as functionality.
As a result, expansion decisions carry more weight. Adding a product is not just adding capability. It changes how agencies perceive your platform, how procurement evaluates risk, and how comfortable buyers feel betting their careers on your roadmap.
This is why clarity matters more in GovTech than almost anywhere else.
The Opportunity in GovTech Acquisitions
GovTech acquisitions are often discussed primarily in terms of risk. But when done with INTENTION, they can be one of the fastest ways to expand relevance and accelerate trust inside public-sector workflows.
I experienced this firsthand when my company, Evertel, was acquired by Genasys. Before I joined Genasys, the company had already acquired ZoneHaven and GEM.
While I was not part of the original acquisition decisions for ZoneHaven or GEM, I lived the downstream reality of integrating multiple GovTech products into something agencies could understand and trust as a unified platform.
What stood out over time is that the hardest challenges were rarely about ambition or intent. They were about alignment of vision.
Build vs Buy Works When Direction Is Clear
Once leadership is aligned on where the platform is going and how it fits into the greater company vision/mission, build vs buy becomes far less contentious and far more practical.
In GovTech, building tends to work best when:
the capability strengthens a shared platform foundation
the same infrastructure can support multiple regulated workflows
tight integration reduces audit, compliance, or operational burden across products
Buying tends to work best when:
trust and incumbency already exist with agencies
workflows are deeply embedded in policy or daily operations
replacing an existing solution would introduce adoption or procurement risk
building would take years, or internal R&D doesn’t have the capability to do so
Neither path is inherently safer. Each serves a different purpose once the destination is understood.
Integration Is Where GovTech Rewards Clarity
Every acquired GovTech product arrives with its own realities:
different security assumptions
different compliance histories
different data models
different customer expectations
different procurement postures
built for a different vision
That is normal in public-sector software.
What determines success is whether there is shared clarity on a few foundational questions:
Which product anchors the platform?
Which workflows does the company intend to own versus support?
How should users move across products without friction or re-authentication?
What does “done” actually look like for customers post-integration?
In GovTech, ambiguity here does not just slow teams down. It creates buyer hesitation. Agencies need to understand not just what you offer, but how it fits into their operational world and survives scrutiny, and often want to understand where you are going with it (aka your vision).
Clarity reduces internal friction. More importantly, it reduces external doubt and buys you time to integrate by removing ambiguity with customers.
The R&D Reality Most Build vs Buy Discussions Ignore
One of the biggest lessons I learned during post-acquisition integration is how often R&D capacity becomes the true constraint.
Integrations and new features almost always move slower than anticipated. Not because teams are ineffective, but because the work is heavier than it looks from the outside.
Engineering time gets consumed by things that rarely show up cleanly in roadmaps:
learning unfamiliar systems, architectures, and data models
aligning security postures and compliance frameworks
reconciling documentation, audits, and certification requirements
migrating products onto a common authentication and access model
supporting customers through transitional states without breaking trust
None of this work is optional in public-sector software. And very little of it is visible to customers or boards while it’s happening.
What looks like a straightforward integration or feature expansion on a slide often turns into months of foundational effort that must be completed before meaningful progress is possible.
This is where clarity becomes an operational advantage.
When the destination is clear, R&D effort compounds. When it is not, engineering teams spend cycles building bridges that may not matter later.
In GovTech, build vs buy decisions that ignore R&D capacity do not fail loudly. They stall quietly.
How to Establish Clarity Before Build or Buy in GovTech
This is the step that is most often skipped, and it matters more in GovTech than anywhere else I’ve seen.
Before debating build versus buy, leadership teams should invest time aligning on a few foundational questions.
1. Define your role in the public-sector stack
Not a feature list. A role.
Are you aiming to be a system of record, a system of engagement, or a connective layer across agencies and workflows?
2. Identify the workflows where trust is non-negotiable
Which workflows require deep institutional confidence, and which can tolerate iteration and experimentation?
3. Decide what must be shared across the platform
Identity, access control, auditability, governance, and data lineage often need to be common to satisfy public-sector requirements and reduce R&D duplication.
4. Be explicit about what success looks like post-integration
In GovTech, success is often measured in adoption depth, renewal survivability, operational reliability, and procurement defensibility, not just cross-sell.
Want this as a usable framework?
I turned the clarity checklist above into a framework you can use with your leadership team before any build vs buy or acquisition discussion.
It’s designed for GovTech. No fluff. No theory. Just the questions that need to be answered before decisions get expensive.
These answers don’t need to be perfect. They need to be clear enough that teams can make consistent decisions.
When Vision and Capacity Lead, Build vs Buy Gets Easier
With clarity of vision in place and capacity acknowledged, build vs buy decisions tend to resolve themselves.
If a capability strengthens the platform core, reduces friction across regulated workflows, and benefits from tight integration, building often makes sense.
If a capability brings established trust, approvals, incumbency, and embedded usage that would take years to earn or build, buying can be the fastest and safest path forward.
In GovTech, expansion is not about adding surface area. It is about earning the right to go deeper.
Clarity Compounds in GovTech
Having lived through GovTech acquisitions and integration from the inside, I am convinced of this:
Clarity does not eliminate complexity, but it makes complexity manageable.
Clarity turns acquisitions into accelerants instead of distractions.
Clarity protects R&D teams from thrash and customers from confusion.
In GovTech, confidence is not created by speed. It is created by coherence.
Build or buy decisions work best when they serve a clearly articulated destination and respect the capacity required to get there. When vision and realism lead, execution has room to succeed, and platforms have room to last.
