This is frequently my observation as well. In the process of creating stricter control the bureaucrat increases the the power of their bureaucracy while shifting the blame for any problems to a faceless entity.
They then institute all sorts of punishments and controls to insure it must be used.
This leads me to one of my primary frustrations with the bureaucratization of our lives. Severe consequences are attached to low stakes situations and rational individuals who see the harm caused by the situation are rendered powerless to make changes.
You can see the process at work within this very thread -- "And within that chain, there should be legal recourse and, in most cases, penal consequences, especially in the case of inadequate software quality/testing/validation, should the software fail to perform its task correctly." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26228195)
People seem unable to imagine any way to improve things except by adding more and more legal consequences. We need to stop doing this!
Is bureaucracy like violence? If it isn't working you aren't using enough of it?
They are basically using software to preserve the problem to which they are the solution. i.e. the shirky principle
In a civil law system it's more likely achievable, but I'm quite sure the requirements aren't that clear cut judging from the text.
That’s in part why international business to business contracts almost always specify a common law jurisdiction as the required venue for any lawsuits.
First problem coming to my mind: do they have the budget to pay the software developers to add this new functionality to the software? Do they have to ask the money to someone else, maybe to the very politicians that changed the requirement?
Then when this is settled there are the usual problems of analysis and implementation. Probably also where to get that input that they didn't have before. It could be a large project. But 16 months, ouch.
Same goes for software requirements. Good requirements make the intent clear but allow implementers some flexibility. Specifying everything in minute detail is usually a recipe for disaster.
I find the government "requirements" process tends to create situations like this. Rather than build flexible software that puts some degree of trust in the person using it, they tend to overspecify the current bureaucratic process. In many cases, the person pushing for the software is looking to use software to enforce bureaucratic control that they have been unable to otherwise exercise, with the effect of the people the project initiator wants to use the software simply working around it. They then institute all sorts of punishments and controls to insure it must be used. This then results in the kind of insane situation we have here, where you can't do something perfectly legal because "computer says no".