Good points.
As part of my career I did work in .gov and did attend some fairly high level meetings—where I was often the only true subject matter expert. That meant I was the lowest ranking person in the room.
It was incredibly difficult to get political appointees to understand even the most basic facts and then to try to drag them to decisions that were even in the general range of reasonable.
They seemed primarily motivated by pleasing big party patrons and being able to spin whatever they did so it sounded good—even if was ridiculous policy.
As you correctly point out, they often failed—or even refused!—to contact others in the bureaucracy who might be affected by their decisions.
I’ve heard the Deep State described as a “consensus rather than a conspiracy”. They have a lot of points of agreement, but no one person is really in charge.
As a result, they may take actions just because a bunch of them may feel that they may benefit from it, possibly in different ways.