that's at least 500k in salaries even for the lowball public sector, and there are at least 230 federal agencies, which you can be damn sure are gonna interpret this as broadly as possible, i.e. including the subagencies that's 400+ under 5 USC § 551 (see https://www.federalregister.gov/agencies)
nothing like kicking off your "efficiency" drive with a $200m+ expense
I'm not sure I agree with the approach, but this seems overstated. At least from an engineer perspective, there are sub-$70k engineer jobs. That four person team could be $250k. Also, they could be pulling that internally instead of external hires.