[Covenant71]

Most of the people responsible for starting the journey have left the local government. I think the big problems are - the fact that they have been fined for not handling personal information in a correct way combined with - not enough technical knowledge to know what their current solution enables - the scope of the problems with the system are so big that they do not know what to do and they feel like they get attacked from everywhere and do not have the professionalism to see the bigger picture - they can't afford to scrap the project and start from the beginning

[cromka]

It's one thing to feel attacked, but they apparently actively try to undermine and derail the competing open source project. That's not mere defending, that's open hostility. So the obvious inclination, IMHO, is that the company behind the original code wants to continue to gain from the ongoing (and, ideally, perpetual) cost of maintenance. Naturally said software company itself cannot openly be the source of those obstructing software changes, so they have the officials to act on their behalf and request them. I hardly can think of any other scenario in this case.