What, like trying to work with a Contractor to overcome a genuine, unpredictable difficulty and then finding that you’re not to be allowed to flex your funding between Years? Like having your carefully worked out funding bid subject to a scrutiny “realism adjustment” and, as a result, there is insufficient budget to pay for work or material at the time already agreed with the Contractor?
There are a lot of dedicated and motivated people in DE&S desperately trying to make the system work inside the Government (Treasury) finance rules and “precautions”. Any lack of knowledge and expertise in some areas is probably due to the ridiculously high rate of turnover of staff managing their own careers (also Government policy). That isn’t a problem for military staff as their high turnover and lack of continuity is already an accepted part of the process.
Top marks to yer man Gray for re-stating the bloody obvious in a new set of phrases.