Said it before, and I'll no doubt say it again, but the days of Gliding On are long gone.

While Government Depts may not be the epitome of efficiency, they have spent the majority of the past decade being forced to "Do More With Less", being stripped back to bare bone and then scraping that as well.  So what may from the outside appear to be "inefficient" may actually be because they cannot afford to do things with proper investment and have to cobble together piecemeal solutions to problems that are, in some cases, unique to that department.

Also being hamstrung by "All Of Government" solutions that, given the widely differing nature of what each department deals with, one solution does not fit any, let alone all, because it's been provided by the lowest tendering bidder *cough*IBM*cough*.

One other thing to remember is that Government Departments are under very close scrutiny, mostly by the media and public who continue to flog the dead horse that all Government Departments should somehow be able to run without costing anything or providing the staff with any form of enjoyment at work lest those precious tax dollars be somehow wasted, all the while, we watch private companies do relatively simple things like a Christmas Lunch, catered by the company.  Could a Govt Dept do that?  Not likely.  They'd never hear the end of it from self righteous tax payers lamenting that the mindless drones ever be allowed to unchain themselves long enough to have a lunch celebrating the end of another year of scrimping.

This attitude towards Govt Depts needs to change.  It's out of date, wildly incorrect and downright disrespectful to those of us who slave away for usually less than the equivalent role in Private sector might pay us, especially come performance review time when we are simply told that it does not matter how well we performed, there's no money in the budget for pay rises.