I've seen it first hand...

The problem isn't so much just that senior managers are incompetent, but that the people higher again that appoint these senior managers are incompetent. The sad truth is that incompetence breeds incompetence.

The people at the top tend to be the wasters who have spent their life in these jobs and inherited them not through skill or ability but over time, of course however as they employ people equally incompetent even after they fade away their successor share the same incompetence gene.

Essentially therefore the problem isn't so much about IT, but senior management in government departments in general, it's not like business where a bad CEO/Manager would kill the business off, government departments are nigh on unkillable, there's just no accountability so the problem persists and continues.

The only way we're going to resolve this problem is start from the top, rebuild the management structures from the highest level possible, employing people, not because candidate X is 50+ and has 40 yrs experience working for some council or whatever but replacing them with people who are dynamic, if someone's been in roughly the same job or at least at the same place for 40 years they have no more than about 3 yrs experience IMO because they learn about their work enviroment in those first 3 yrs and their knowledge remains static from there on. We need people who have jumped between various businesses, or even god-forbid, someone young and dynamic with an up to date point of view, not someone who's knowledge has been left to stagnate working for the local council or whatever for 40yrs and hence gets given the job as a reward for his "loyal" (lazy) service.