Defra teaching Masterclasses

"a master class in bad decision making, poor planning, incomplete testing of IT systems, confused lines of responsibility and a failure by the management team to face up to the unfolding crisis."

Defra cannot make decisions. They are all so scared of making a mistake that they spend three times as much money deliberating, 'fact-finding' and procrastinating than two failed attempts and a successful implementation would have taken.

They are very good at solutioning, but not very good at providing requirements, which means that any project is pretty much doomed from the start.

They have no recognised lines of responsibility. There are hundreds of little empires which refuse to share (information, resources) with other parts of the same organisation.

As someone else said, strip out some of the dead wood, and take on people who can make decisions.