Same experience, also in the private sector.
> This is typical. You need to know how government works to understand it. I understand it, but do not approve it. I am also not frustrated about it, its just how this world works currently, in majority of the countries as far as I know.
Yep, I mean the issues with unnecessary jobs and inflated projects and budgets is not exactly news, I think it's just part of society's struggle to adapt to a post scarcity economy, while not shortening the amount of working hours. It's not really surprising that it also affects software.
I see the project paid for few willas of ppl involved at the top and was discontinued due to missed deadlines and missing functionality.
Noone was fired, sued or even scolded for wasting millions of taxpayer money.
All you can do is laugh. This world is a joke.
One example - I created Help Desk system for the public finances of entire country using Redmine and other FOSS tools. The cost was 0, the time to implement it was single year of not so focused work and it served hundreeds of thousands of people. Then IBM took over with its service desk, implmenting it for years and costing infinity. They could get into tender, I could not since I and my team are small company. The funny thing is that stakeholder subteam abandoned it and returned to my solution (with 0 maintenance since I left the company).
This is typical. You need to know how government works to understand it. I understand it, but do not approve it. I am also not frustrated about it, its just how this world works currently, in majority of the countries as far as I know.