[yasth]

I do kind of suspect that a lot of the problem was really their ability to impose a $1/user "tech" fee. Once you get to that point you really don't have to explain over much to anyone unless things go massively wrong (which they did here).

They'd probably have been much better off it they hadn't managed to get a truly massive amount of money together. Spending tons of money properly is far harder than people realize. Unless you have a cadre of people who've closely managed outsourced contractors before you are basically going to be giving a lot of people learning opportunities on how things can go wrong.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was less a political hack than someone getting exactly what they asked for and having no idea what to do with that horrible fate. Imagine quoting millions to fix multiple complex underlying problems and being handed that with what was no doubt an unrealistic timeline.If adding people to a late project often makes it later, the same is often true of money. Knowing how to spend millions of dollars on a tech project is a skill, and it isn't a common one in chronically underfunded departments.