I'm so glad we're discussing it on HN, so I can use better analogies: it's feature creep. Imagine a product wich was originally elegant and perfomant, almost in a unix way - but then dozens of product managers, each with best of intentions, started adding features to it. Oh, and the product itself was something akin to operating system kernel in terms of security - having monopoly on violence and able to literally kill people - but all those product managers wouldn't hear about moving all these shiny new features into userland, because of perfomance and ease of development.

That's what a typical modern government is.