I work for a digital services agency currently working with several provincial governments, and have some perspective on this. I call it "the IBM hangover". A

I work for a digital services agency currently working with several provincial governments, and have some perspective on this. I call it "the IBM hangover". At some point, someone gives IBM or various consultants millions of dollars to implement some IBM software--Powerbuilder, Java, Domino, etc.--which they do, following RUP, which means a pile of UML docs on top of it. It actually works, the gov't says "great, we can stop funding ongoing dev for a couple decades." Two decades later, CGI has taken over the IBM project for half the maintenance fees because they know how to do RUP, and thus meet the piles of NFRs IBM left behind (such as "all metadata changes must be auditable", meaning all UML diagrams must have a documented review/approval chain separate from source control"). I sat in a meeting where a stakeholder showed us the report generation page, and said "if we click on this link, it crashes the server, and we have to open a ticket to restart it". Software does rot, and gov't procurement processes and requirements are those left behind by IBM to prevent smaller, "agile" agencies from doing meaningful work. To my mind, there are two flaws here: one is letting IBM in, in the first place, to set the ongoing standard; two is refusing to acknowledge that every organization needs an organic software dev capability that can use outsourcing as a resource multiplier, not as an IT replacement.