> This has to be set up and configured, it is not default by any means.
If you use the GPO templates it absolutely is the default. You have to go out of your way to turn it off (and some people do for both good and bad reasons).
> whether you can pay enough to attract the talent you need, whether you can afford the opex+capex for the level of service you think is standard, etc.
Luckily a 3-2-1 backup strategy doesn't require top tier talent. It is mostly policy, costs, and time. You could literally have an intern do it if the business took the time to set a policy and buy the prerequisites.
The difficult part has always been getting business/government buy-in because they'd prefer to be apathetic until something goes wrong or under-spend on something that won't pay dividend immediately.
Talk to government IT some time. I've worked in that environment. There's no lack of talent, there's a lack of funds for things like backups and nobody in management (political appointed or otherwise) wants to make actual decisions/do any managing. I had colleagues "borrow" a spare HDD, copy the data off onto it, then take it home with them because that was the only backup an entire County had (because nothing else was funded/authorized).
You can try to bike-shed/excuse this issue away, but at its core it is managerial incompetence/apathy. If they wanted the money for it, they'd find it, if they wanted the time to produce policy they'd find it, and if there was real consequences to their incompetence you can bet they would have already.