Using fewer words introduces less cognitive load and drives your point better.
For example, you wrote "The advice [...] seems somewhat pointless to me." Well, are you saying that it is pointless, or not? I don't know you, so I don't know what your scale of pointlessness is. I don't know what "somewhat pointless" corresponds to. Is it a tiny bit pointless, is it a medium amount of pointlessness, something else? I don't know, but I have to think about it because you wrote a meaningless word in your sentence. And even once I have understood the sentence, I am left thinking: "well, if it's only somewhat pointless, maybe it's not pointless after all!"
The same thing happens with "key stakeholders": now I have to think about a hierarchy of stakeholders. What scale is being used? Who's key, who's non-key? Does the sentence apply to all stakeholders, only some of them?
Multiply this by a hundred occurrences in a long document, and you obtain something that will be more difficult to read. But government documents have to be readable by everyone: people whose native tongue is not English, uneducated people who have trouble reading simple texts, etc. And for what? Sugarcoating your text so that it's less assertive? Showing literary prowess?
For example, you wrote "The advice [...] seems somewhat pointless to me." Well, are you saying that it is pointless, or not? I don't know you, so I don't know what your scale of pointlessness is. I don't know what "somewhat pointless" corresponds to. Is it a tiny bit pointless, is it a medium amount of pointlessness, something else? I don't know, but I have to think about it because you wrote a meaningless word in your sentence. And even once I have understood the sentence, I am left thinking: "well, if it's only somewhat pointless, maybe it's not pointless after all!"
The same thing happens with "key stakeholders": now I have to think about a hierarchy of stakeholders. What scale is being used? Who's key, who's non-key? Does the sentence apply to all stakeholders, only some of them?
Multiply this by a hundred occurrences in a long document, and you obtain something that will be more difficult to read. But government documents have to be readable by everyone: people whose native tongue is not English, uneducated people who have trouble reading simple texts, etc. And for what? Sugarcoating your text so that it's less assertive? Showing literary prowess?