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I don't doubt you're correct about the incentives, but one point seems amiss...

> If there's any, even the slightest, chance that buying from a business might one day reflect badly on the civil servant in the procurement office, then they won't buy from that business.

You don't think that spending £4.1 million on this garbage might reflect badly on someone?

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Nope. They followed the process, they bought from an approved, respected, supplier. The site meets the specification they drew up. There will be meeting notes from a few hundred meetings to document that everyone did their job properly.

For us techies who know the tech (or even the law, in this case) this is a disaster. But for the folks in those meetings this is what they understood to be the brief.

If enough of the public gets ahold of the story so that a politician has to get up on their hind legs and issue a statement, then harsh words might be had. But otherwise, this is business as usual.

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