"Yet Another Anonymous coward" in the comments there has a point (the commenters are mainly from the UK): There is no upside if it goes well - the head of the

"Yet Another Anonymous coward" in the comments there has a point (the commenters are mainly from the UK): There is no upside if it goes well - the head of the agency doesn't get a bigger yacht, the civil servants don't get stock options and the minister has moved on to another dept. If it goes at all badly - then the press rip apart the head of dept and the minister responsible, and the current head and minister who had nothing to do with it. So the only motivation is to avoid every possible point of blame and ideally drag the process out until some new guy is in charge.