[nicoburns]

It seems to be mostly cultural inertia. People accept that the government department is underperforming because they expect government departments to be underperforming. Which they expect because that has generally been true in their experience. Which is the case because nobody demands better.

It's a vicious circle, but not an inevitable one. There are plenty of examples of well-functioning government departments, and in some countries there is no significant difference between the performance of publicly run institutions and their private counterparts (although there is of course plenty of variance within both of those groups).