Why does this keep happening time and time again?!?
Because there are no/insufficient people capable of framing contracts properly and then managing them within uk.gov.
AKA client-side capability. The cost of which is clearly never properly factored into this sort of thing.
DafT are just the same. It's the root cause of the current rail fiasco - and first became blindingly obvious after Virgin's successful challenge of the ECML franchise award. Which, of course, is still to be re-tendered.
Then, of course, there's the Home Office. G4S tagging fiasco. Probation service fiasco. etc. etc.
And the G4S Olympics security fiasco.
Let's not mention DWP and the WCA.
All, every single one, symptomatic of ineffective client-side contract management. And the constant forgetting of the maxim that the Government can (maybe) transfer (some) financial risk, but the risk of service delivery failure can never be transferred. After all, that's the job of the government.....