The politicians promote the staff who tell them what they want to hear, and independent advice has been lost.
This is a simple case of objectively government projects around the world failing over and over again for more or less the same reasons. There are quite many studies on that topic. Lots of nice articles that get written whenever another one fails. So, that's not a right wing mantra against big government but a nice argument that maybe they should try doing things differently. Especially considering that there are some well run countries with more success on this front. Quite a few of those countries are what you might label classic big government states. I lived in a few of them (Sweden, Finland, Netherlands). These three have had some duds but also some successes when it comes to government IT projects. Overall well run places.
All software projects are fraught with risk, but when no one takes responsibility for the outcome, and particularly when the people who generate requirements have no stake in its success, the probability of failure increases rapidly. The de-skilling of the public service in favour of advice from highly paid consultants, often the same ones who provide the services, means no impartial advice or trustable expertise, so governments can't be smart buyers.
They are not willing to invest in quality dev/product/project managers instead they pay below market rates (see jobs on seek) yet there are endless budgets for consultants and outsourcing.
So, they got exactly the thing they insisted on. And now they are blaming the consultants. Bureaucracies work like this: they are full of useless people defending their existence by participating in endless meetings that will find creative ways to deflect any form of responsibility and accountability. So, bonus points for meetings with consultants. The more expensive the better.
Pass it up the chain to the politicians who will be long gone by the time the whole thing blows up. They absolutely love that; do what the expensive consultant says. Which is of course echoing what they were told by the incompetent bureaucrats. The bigger the egos in the room, the dumber the plans get. Usually these projects start off fine and then some moron pulls rank and derails the whole thing by insisting on adding their own requirements to the pile. Big expensive projects attract that kind of behavior; it's almost inevitable. And then some politician signs off on it. Job well done.
The consultants bill by the hour so they don't mind the endless bullshit and they take notes. And then they do as they are told to take the money regardless of whether that makes any sense. There's almost no way for a happy end in such a situation. Don't blame the consultants; blame the career bureaucrats and the politicians for being absolute idiots, again. This outcome was 100% predictable 20 years ago.