Still white in the morning

I feel like I have spent the last two days doing something that should take two minutes.
Occasionally I have need to procure a particular type of digital map data  from  a Scottish government agency. Effectively you quote a reference number for the zone and the stuff gets emailed to you. It is a process that easily lends itself to an online interface.
Instead you phone and the first person who answers knows nothing about the service and suggests emailing someone who might know about it. At this suggestion I can see the task disappearing in to the horizon. Eventually I am able to overcome the receptionist reluctance to put me through to a human and I speak to someone who knows about it but he indicates the system may have changed since my last order. I have to take receipt of a big document, sign and return. I give him the details by email and wait for the data. At night before office hours end I make a prompting call. Its in hand. In morning (now today) I get a call to say that I need to pre pay now. "That's fine. I will do it now over the phone." No, I have to be sent a formal quotation and then I have to phone a separate accounts person (who sits opposite current adviser). The quote arrives late AM but I can't get through because they shut for lunch. Very late afternoon I finally get data. Apparently there was a doubt I would even get the data today because there is a back log of orders.

I wonder why?

Elsewhere I have online account with a mapping company. The service is totally web based. You outline the zone of interest, the cost appears under your nose, you fix the frame and you download it and you get an invoice by email. The process takes about 120 seconds out of the working day.
The inefficiency of the government agency is appalling and everything seems to move at the pace of a glacier. I dealt with at least five people over the course of about ten separate calls across two days.

I have in the past written to successive MSPs about perceived failings of this vast top heavy office too. The consequences of their continued mistakes have far reaching implications in the lives of normal hard working folk. The advisers themselves are nice people and as helpful as they can be but the politicians seem to have no interest in bringing this department in to the 21st Century.