The problem with a database is that business users struggle to build them, they take longer, and sometimes can’t hold logic in the same way.
Plus in a database you can’t do the same sort of real-time analysis and also pass the document around for other non-technical folk to add to and modify.
In the real world in big companies, people often don’t want to talk to IT because they over-spec and quote what are perceived to be giant sums of money for something that can be created in an hour in excel.
To add to this point, the latest article says that they started building a replacement to the spreadsheet two months ago, so I think that reinforces the speed of a spreadsheet implementation vs anything else in the public sector!
You might not have realized this, but a global pandemic was starting in January and they were probably collectively shitting bricks at that point trying to shoe-string together something to help capture reporting, while probably being in a change freeze, and also probably having to do a mass-migration to at home work with the inevitable struggles of that.
Plus in a database you can’t do the same sort of real-time analysis and also pass the document around for other non-technical folk to add to and modify.
In the real world in big companies, people often don’t want to talk to IT because they over-spec and quote what are perceived to be giant sums of money for something that can be created in an hour in excel.