I feel both cases involved documentation, approval, months of lead time -- only the OP didnt have to deal with paperwork themselves in the physical securtiy dom

I feel both cases involved documentation, approval, months of lead time -- only the OP didnt have to deal with paperwork themselves in the physical securtiy domain. In every sphere there are attempts at security that either achieve a practical balance of fit versus downsides. The failure of access cards is probably analogous to a well intentioned sofware authentication system that was implemented without simulating or testing for the scale of deployment, and had to be rolled back when it failed in production.