Kickbacks galore, my brother works in ed-tech. He said one state rewrites their public school report card system every two years like clockwork because of that.
You know the crazy thing is that moderately sized private companies I've worked (500-5000 people) have plenty of that kind of BS.
I have seen a piece of mediocre software or service vendors sold as a panacea to my last 2 shops, skip POC phase and just get purchased off the back of someone (not in IT) very very senior being buddies with the founders. No users or technical people were asking for it.. just gets rammed down from place up high until a reasonable enough niche is found to put it into PROD.
It ends up being a solution in search of a problem, with a couple years finding where to use it, a couple years finding it inadequate, and then a couple years removing it again.
Kickbacks galore, my brother works in ed-tech. He said one state rewrites their public school report card system every two years like clockwork because of that.