The excuses vary (taking systems offline to run archaic batch processing, pretending to want to protect jobs by not having machines outperform workers, etc.), but the bottom line is that a certain political faction deliberately writes stupid rules like this as sabotage in order to prove that government doesn't work.

It's the same sort of reason why the local license plate office charges a "convenience fee" to renew your tag online even though it costs the public less than paying a clerk to process it in person.