No sensible parent makes his child absolutely accountable. The result would be an absolutely irresponsible child. Procurement people are slow to see that. They forget process in the rush to guarantee results. Good design is an interaction among responsible people.
Software has to evolve with hardware.
We must spiral in on a good design, says Science magazine writer Mitchell Waldrop. You cannot specify anything good and new before you create it. Big over-specified systems are too hard to fix when they break down. Our procurement system itself is like bad software. Maybe it should be replaced.