I agree with drauk - there is little pressure.
Displaying terrain really well is trivial nowadays - anybody seen FSX? It's amazing. You could land in zero-zero with that sort of quality.
There are issues with the databases. The only way to get the database accurate is using airborne or space imagery, and space imagery (space shuttle radar, basically) is the only way to get decent world coverage.
The current SRTM data is accurate to 100ft USA and 300ft non-USA, IIRC. So somebody somewhere has to do some extra work to bring this up to "obstacle clearance" requirements. Perhaps there is a non-free version of the SRTM data which is sub-100ft; obviously the data actually taken will be the same accuracy whether over Washington or Sakhalin Island
so it's a case of somebody in the US govt deciding what resolution will be classified and what resolution will be released, and how much for.
Then, the process of generating the data needs to meet some paperwork/procedure requirements before it can be sold for real use. This doesn't mean a great deal in reality (the terrain colouring in some TSO129 MFDs is thousands of feet wrong) but I suspect it does need to be a bit better in this case because somebody might just rely on it in an emergency...