I don't think the cloud and/or auto-scaling would help here. Most likely this is due to poor architecture choices. Also, from what I can see, gov't departments

I don't think the cloud and/or auto-scaling would help here. Most likely this is due to poor architecture choices. Also, from what I can see, gov't departments normally outsource for projects and only ever retain staff for maintenance activities (i.e. keep the lights running). It's probably due to the way budgeting is done.