>And taking the thing down for 12 hours, 1/4 of every weekend could possibly be good in what way?
Some stakeholder somewhere probably refuses to go down during the business week for whatever reason. Maybe that stakeholder isn't even in government. Stuff like this is not uncommon in the world of enterprise.
I am usually the first to quote Hanlon's razor and attribute something like this to incompetence, but in this case it really hard not to see the malice in the actions taken.
Some stakeholder somewhere probably refuses to go down during the business week for whatever reason. Maybe that stakeholder isn't even in government. Stuff like this is not uncommon in the world of enterprise.