To naively soapbox for a second, I don't know much about public policy, but I have a persistent hunch that a lot of the "government inefficiency" comes down to the obsession with hiring contractors for everything. While I know some people in gov't contracting and they do good work (and definitely faster than I've seen get done in federal agencies proper), there has to be so much inefficiency in the whole process, so many unnecessary layers added on.
It's one explanation (albeit obviously an incomplete one) I've heard for how we used to, say, build infrastructure so quickly, even for all the flaws that had - in Robert Moses' time, when the government wanted to build something, they would go down to their office full of engineers and draftsmen and get it sketched out within the week. Now they have to go through a whole process of hiring a contractor for design, then construction, etc, etc...