Exactly the same thing happened in Australia. We lived in an apartment with flammable cladding in Melbourne that would have cost $50-100k to replace. Luckily we were just renting, so it wasn't our responsibility (we moved out shortly thereafter anyway).
Having family members who worked inside government and having (briefly) done so myself, I completely agree with the grandparent. Government departments are basically just sprawling hierarchies of middle-management. Very few people who actually do things or take responsibility for anything. Those who want to are likely to get fed up and leave very quickly.
It's all about contracting things out to the usual suspects of consulting firms, who inevitably are only interested in dragging things out for as long as possible and leeching as much money as they can.
There was a recent report comparing metro construction in Italy with the USA that came to the same conclusion. They concluded that in-house expertise is by far the biggest factor in delivering large-scale projects on time and on budget.
My pet theory, not fully fleshed out yet, is that it's a consequence of "job creation" being a fundamental task of government. Or at least one we assign to it by virtue of constantly holding it accountable for "the unemployment rate" and other such statistics.
I think there's also an analogy with the way software gets slower as hardware gets faster. That is, pointless bureaucracy and wasteful work grows as technology allows a smaller number of people to get the "real work" done. As long as the final result is acceptable (company doesn't go bankrupt / software slowness is tolerable), nothing is done about the waste.
Edit: that includes overly complicated arrangements of sub-sub-sub-contractors with 5 layers of management, all passing messages around before the one guy with a hammer can actually do anything. Kind of like the modern web stack.
Having family members who worked inside government and having (briefly) done so myself, I completely agree with the grandparent. Government departments are basically just sprawling hierarchies of middle-management. Very few people who actually do things or take responsibility for anything. Those who want to are likely to get fed up and leave very quickly.
It's all about contracting things out to the usual suspects of consulting firms, who inevitably are only interested in dragging things out for as long as possible and leeching as much money as they can.
There was a recent report comparing metro construction in Italy with the USA that came to the same conclusion. They concluded that in-house expertise is by far the biggest factor in delivering large-scale projects on time and on budget.