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The Dutch government is unfortunately known for having IT projects fail constantly, they've already accumulated an enormous technical debt. They outsource a lot because the current staff is either close to retirement or just can't be motivated anymore to put in the effort. Hearing this is the least surprising to be honest.

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I've done quite a bit of work in Dutch government IT and would like to add that the failure of these projects is often because of politics and constantly changing requirements. IT is often working really hard and doing the best they can, but scope creep, forced deadlines and constant changes in leadership make it nearly impossible to actually do things right.

Technical debt is also a huge issue indeed, since focus is always on delivering new features, because that allows leadership to move to new positions. Delivering stable maintainable code/infra isn't visible.

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