In addition to organizational forgetfulness and resultant over reliance on codified procedures and other organizational survival strategies developed in the absence of competition, I have a feeling that big technical bureaucracies have a major problem keeping their individual employee missions aligned with the organizational mission.

The Corps has other problems as well:

•  Lack of  transparency in planning, design, construction and operations
• Overcommitment in terms of mission vs. funding
• Rejection and misuse of technology
• Organizational defensiveness
  • rejection of contractor input
    
  • rejection of contrary evidence
  • deflection of responsibility
  • misrepresentation of results
  • need to externalize blame
• Bias against questioning orders
  

These are all well documented in Barry's book The Rising Tide.

It seems the Corps needs to exert more attention to its internal processes. The lessons from NASA definitely apply. Once they get these internals behind them they can make some headway on rebuilding the flood defense system in a way that makes sense.