Why did they take this approach?
It's the baked-in Government approach which killed the NHS patient data scheme and almost every other Government IT project / disaster, which is to impose central control. For more on that, read Richard Bacon and Christopher Hope's book "Conundrum - Why every Government gets things wrong."
What’s worse, is that it seems to be being designed by monkeys. When I spoke to some of the developers a few weeks ago, they weren’t aware of the fact that Bluetooth LE has been designed to be untraceable. So spurning the knowledge of a small group of experts within Apple and Google and the Bluetooth community who actually know how BLE works in phones does not appear to be a great design decision.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
