If it's a government employee (as it should), it shouldn't be open to fraud and abuse, no. There should be a trail of what happened

Yes, there 'should' be a trail. And there's someone and a process to check that trail. And a process to find the issues, correctly so, and fix, and do all that on a timely basis, and reimburse the person for damages, ...

PS: I have actually suffered through some of this, badly so, though in an unrelated setting.

It comes back to which system is more robust/mistake-proof and more practically recoverable.