...at the expense of other worthwhile projects...
Of course, when any organization spends any money, on X thing, there will be those who claim it would have been better spent on Y.
And, yes, there were other very large initiatives (in other areas - this was at the beginning of the web-fication of public service IT ) that were also well funded. And, I attended some committee meetings regarding funding of some other projects - a real eye opener that was!
- and was at least very glad one of them did not get funded, as it was a 'get rich quick scheme' for another 'professional' group.
But, from my perspective, at the time, this project was very worthwhile, as it included (for 1 example out of perhaps a dozen) big improvements in communications across and between (layers of) disaster response teams (the ebola scare happened at about this same time) that simply had not existed before.
Anyway, what happened, happened, and is one case where I just happened to be positioned to observe beneficial outcomes from the Goofy leading the Brilliant. Now, had the IT teams been also Goofies (almost happened, actually), it could have been a real mess - and we all know of big budget projects that came to no good, in both private and public sector (MS Phones?).
Thanks!