With added wikipedia links…

From Wiggins, B. (2004). Specifying and procuring software. In A. Gilchrist, & B. Mahon, Information architecture-designing information environments for purpose: Managing Information for the Knowledge Economy Series (1 ed., pp. 69-85). London, England, UK: Facet Publishing. The word in bold capitals is my addition.

A client needed guidance to build a business case for to support a procurement decision. The client was asked if they would be content if the resulting business case determined that the decision that had ALREADY been made was not the best way to proceed. Unfortunately the client was adamant that business case had to support the decision. The obvious question then became, why bother preparing the business case?

Have you experienced this at all?

My laughter at the above quote prompted a civil servant to tell me of the concept of policy-based evidence-making (instead of the desired evidence-based policy-making). Gibber!