Whoever runs these departments is letting bright technical people make the technical decisions. This does result in some CV-Driven-Development, but for the mos

Whoever runs these departments is letting bright technical people make the technical decisions. This does result in some CV-Driven-Development, but for the most part it's a hell of a lot better than trying to explain VCS or DR to your pointy haired manager. These .GOV dept don't really need to worry about finances and they seem to be willing to hire contract workers and let them get heavily involved in the project. In the UK contractors will happily earn double your perm staff and that's before counting the fact they can bypass the 40% tax bracket. Compare that to the private sector, they tend to prefer that all decisions are made by perm staff who are often outdated and are happy to sit there at half the contractors salary, paying double the tax and costing the company over 1.5x their headline salary. Doesn't really make sense to me, you're not gonna find the best and brightest by paying them in a terrible way when they have an easy, more lucrative, alternative.