You are completely right that local government bureaucrats are lazy, but the central bankers building the architecture are not. Governments won't build this from scratch—they will simply plug into turnkey systems currently being developed by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and major central banks. Once that unified ledger infrastructure is handed to the state, adding programmable parameters (like expiring funds or category restrictions) isn't hard labor; it's just flipping a switch on the backend. They will sell it to the public as a simple, convenient app, but the underlying rails will absolutely be smart-contract based because that is the only way to enforce compliance at scale.