Can anyone explain why this is a bad thing? All I hear about this is conspiracy theories or anti-government rhetoric but never a clear reason to why this is bad. I can't see a reason considering all of the benefits it can bring, and similar things have been rolled out across Nordic countries.
Well, for one thing, the project would be gifted to one of the usual gravy-train companies, Fujitsu/TCS/Cognizant/Accenture. They will spend untold tens of billions on a half-baked bag of crap, beg for yet more money to fix it (blaming gov in the process). Eventually it'll be rolled out several years late and many billions over budget. And of course, there'll be board positions for those in gov that play along.
This time it might be given to Palantir instead, so there's that to look forward to.