This isn't really true. The people making the decisions will have more or less zero insight into the data format being used to store data, they'll just know tha

This isn't really true. The people making the decisions will have more or less zero insight into the data format being used to store data, they'll just know that data is stored. IMO, a much more likely scenario: a brittle, haphazard system was set up with extremely short notice at the start of everything. One administrative snafu led to another, ran into "well, it's working so let's not touch it", and we got to where we are today.