The normalisation of a defect list is one of the biggest dysfunctions of conventional project management and waterfall.
“Thank you for your money, here are your defects. I shall now deliberately release this technical debt into your systems and then we will all leave.
Doughnuts for everyone!”
I’ve become totally convinced of the folly of outsourcing the development or operation of anything that isn’t a commodity and non-customer- facing, ie. bottom right of Wardley Map.
So there should not be an us-and-them over this, only “we”.
Secondly, I’m equally convinced that you will never get quality until those who build it are those who run it. The whole construct of project management and waterfall is dysfunctional because those who build it then throw the dead cat over the fence to somebody else to run.
In short, systems debt never gets solved until it is the collective responsibility of those who build and run the system.