But then we need something to interface with the db. Getting any programming language installed isn't going to happen in government.
Best of both worlds: libsqlite.dll is almost certainly on any corporate Windows rollout somewhere already, and you can load it into Excel as an extension for a pretty front-end that happens to have a programming language built in.
Nocodb is trying to solving the issues of implementing a spreadsheet-like frontend on top of a database backend
https://www.nocodb.com/