I think it's common in a lot of public and quasi-public institutions (museums, universities, NGOs, etc.). When the organization has ballooned up to hundreds of staff members and ossified administrative procedures, leadership will launch new initiatives that are usually just existing departments with fewer hoops to jump through, the attention of the executives, and more money allocated via grants for "exciting new work." Consultants and short-term staff (~5 yr tenure) are brought on and paid large sums of money to do work that could have already been done with a re-structuring of existing protocols.

My hunch is that this allows leadership to not actually have to dig down into the institutions they're a part of. They can remain at the highest levels, interacting only with 6-figure salary people (usually hired by the current leadership), without having to actually see how the sausage is made at the place they're in charge of.