Quote Originally Posted by sandbag View Post
... You're OK to talk to the vendor, so long as both you and the vendor know that you (as the user) don't have any actual, apparent or implied authority to enter into or modify contracts. I usually give my users a little blurb to stick at the end of e-mails to cover that. Who told you that you couldn't talk to them?
It's usually somebody at the program management level (government or contractor) who's decided that they want all information to funnel through them for insecurity/political/career reasons. (FWIW, if you are letting your users talk to the developer/vendor, and as you've described, you're doing things the right way.)