One of the difficulties in the Department of National Defence is that the entire budget is allotted to the department as a whole for a series of programs and activities.
In the public sector world, it is very important never to blow your budget. Everyone shows a surplus. When you add up surpluses in a range of areas, you sometimes see that people perhaps thought that they would have expenses, but did not make them before year-end for various reasons.
So you need a little more strategic view of it all to be able to see that, in the bigger picture, a lot of people were not spending their money. You need better information in order to see that with enough lead time.