If public-sector work actually cared about reducing risks, then SRE would be huge in the public sector. SRE is literally about making rational decisions about e

If public-sector work actually cared about reducing risks, then SRE would be huge in the public sector. SRE is literally about making rational decisions about engineering reliability in the context of risk-tolerance levels (i.e. availability/error and financial budgets). But it's not. The kind of risk-avoidance that pervades the public sector (really, all sufficiently large organizations) is actually one of political risk avoidance. It's perfectly OK for systems to fail for reasons that were forewarned, because management's ass is covered. If something is working, then don't fix it, because all change is political risk. This happens because ultimately, at the end of the day, public sector organizations are led by politicians. The "deep state" is not genuinely independent from politics - the attitudes of leadership trickle down the chain. No matter which policies are currently favored by the politician serving at the head, the process of advancing your interests is largely identical.