It's not just governments. I contracted at Nike for a project that had a boatload the developers. I was on the UI team and there were 6 of us building a UI th

It's not just governments. I contracted at Nike for a project that had a boatload the developers. I was on the UI team and there were 6 of us building a UI the size of which I had built (almost) alone at the previous place I worked. This isn't the developers fault, it was all because businesses are so risk-averse that they must throw a boatload of money at something because failure looks really bad. Yet they fail all the time anyways. The only reason some businesses don't spend so much on resources is because they simply can't - they don't have the money to do so, which forces them to be streamlined and 'efficient'.