Wow, this topic got no love at all.
I worked in government for a decade and a half. Most of my encounters with management were incredibly frustrating due to my innate desire to get things done and their innate desire to cover their fat asses and make sure they never got blamed for anything. Projects were even worse. I got handed a project once which made sooo much sense. Then I found out the project had been ongoing for two years and made no progress. Why? You needed buy-in from a vast group of people, none of whom were willing to commit time to do any work other than attend meetings. Why? Because while the project would benefit the whole agency, and in fact, the whole country, nobody wanted to be the one paying for it. The cost wasn't much, but even so, every directorate and every branch said "Why should I pay for it?" So I duly wrote up a detailed business plan, did lots of research, attended lots of meetings, and then handed it off to someone else when I got promoted a couple of years later. Meh. They're probably still puttering along. It was a project, incidentally, to use information in our computers to warn us of possible identity theft, which was then and remains a growing problem for the agency.
My friend at the RCMP spent three years working on a project they regarded as extremely important and put a lot of resources into. Then senior management changed and they decided to yank the budget.