they so thoroughly took the hardest route and made questionable choices that it was almost sure to fail

Typical government move going full malicious compliance while allowing "a few selected friends" from consulting companies to make a ton of money. They could've just picked Debian and rolled with it. Let's face it, nobody develops desktop applications anymore most of the govt work is already done on custom built web platforms, any OS that can run a browser is good enough to address around 90% of the govt daily work.

Meanwhile China is creating their own distro that will be successful for sure because they've plans to move the public sector and whatever private they influence to the thing.