The Australian government is particularly stupid at the moment. I leave as an exercise for the reader the question of whether this is example or counter-example of that.
Australian governments exhibit a constant level of stupidity; it's just that the focus on stupidity is shifted around depending on who is in power.
I'm calling that Chester's Law, and quoting you henceforth.
We have a surprisingly nice country, considering our governance over the years. I'm a bit worried 'bout the current mob, though, they seem determined to wreck things even more than previous governments. I think I preferred the previous mob: stabbing themselves in the back distracted them from stuffing things up!
But you'd imagine (or hope?) decisions like this aren't being made by any MPs, who probably know little about IT.
AGIMO is funny. It used to be part of the Department of Communications, then it got slurped up by Finance. The people in charge were career public servants, totally interchangeable with no real idea of what the org was doing. What they basically did was develop policy according to whatever the Minister said in Question Time, which frequently led to whole new projects being invented in a rush on a Thursday afternoon and made into unassailable policy by Monday. So in a sense, decision were being made by MPs. Though you're right, this doesn't seem to be suffering from the same problem.