After seeing how government orgs manage tech projects from the inside in late stage capitalism I’ll tell you what happened.

Some criminally corrupt parasite in the political class was wowed by bribes and cocaine from the sales teams of the big 4, who assured them they can do it cheaper, faster, better with 100 offshore Indians. Most of the sub-contractors of sub-contractors working on the project were just warm bodies without the skills or experience, requiring the handful of onshore staff to spend 100% of their time in meetings, fighting fires, hand holding incompetent managers and juniors, doing hundreds of hours of overtime, severely impacting their physical Ave mental health.

Meanwhile a team of 20 onshore staff would have done it cheaper, faster, better 90% of the time.