I worked in this space in one of the biggest issues is the kind of company and the kind of dysfunction within this company that causes them to think that hiring consultants externally is a good idea.
It's almost always not a good idea of course. It's a really really good way to minimize risk if you have some terrible position in government where there's no upside to performance but there's a huge downside to making the wrong decision that blows things up. You bring in external consultants they put a stamp on some solution which they can't ever implement and you can just point to them and say wasn't my fault.
In one of my first jobs out of school clients at the large shipping company we were consulting to would regularly ask us for information other employees at that company had provided us. It struck me as odd, so I asked my manager about it. He explained that our work involved two departments at the company whose directors hated each other and wouldn't let their teams work together. Their employees used us as intermediaries to share info critical to doing their jobs without getting in trouble for it.
Later in my career I was brought in by tech teams to recommend solutions that they'd already thoroughly researched and settled on, but didn't have the internal clout to get approved. Once the external expert OK'd it they'd get the budget and headcount they'd been asking for.
It's almost always not a good idea of course. It's a really really good way to minimize risk if you have some terrible position in government where there's no upside to performance but there's a huge downside to making the wrong decision that blows things up. You bring in external consultants they put a stamp on some solution which they can't ever implement and you can just point to them and say wasn't my fault.