On the one hand, yes.
On the other, procurement is so broken, that if their inhouse team is only marginally better, it's a win.
I totally agree.
As flawed as this new approach might turn out to be, the traditional approach may (or may not) have an even worse probability of success.
> procurement is so broken
Anecdata: while i was in a tiny tiny software company, we got an in at a large auto manufacturer. They said they had been trying to get someone to do that job for like 2 years.
The job was of the 'two people 3 months' magnitude. The procurement system was also of the 'two people 3 months' magnitude so we simply gave up.
In the article's case, they could have done this even before coding assistants. It would have cost the estimated 5 million instead of 850k, but that's still 10x less than the 54 million.