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It's a very long time since I was in any branch of the Civil Service but at the time I was introducing some IT to the lab. Slightly more recently (it's all a long time ago now) I was working for something with a strong resemblance to the Civil Service in many ways. In either role I'd have been very reluctant to let the sticky fingers of the central organisation near what I was doing - I preferred to keep things working and not have my time wasted by ill-conceived efforts to "help".