Government Inefficiency In Project Execution Lies In Non-Accountability (read: monopoly)
Why are government projects always so inefficient. They are always over budget and behind schedule.
Why is this even a matter of concern? Well because government projects are financed by taxpayers money. By not being within the boundaries of the budget and within the timeline, government projects waste taxpayers money - YOUR MONEY. This especially applies to mega projects as they are mostly always loved and pushed by politicians who see them as monuments in their honor.
Some examples:
Channel tunnel UK-France - 80% over budget
Denver international airport, USA - 200% over budget
Sydney Opera House, AU - 1440% over budget
This problem actually has academic recognition. Bent Flyvbjerg from University of Oxford has coined a term:
The "iron law of megaprojects" is identified as the main challenge to megaproject management: "Over budget, over time, under benefits, over and over again."
Bent Flyvbjerg, The Oxford Handbook of Megaproject Management, Oxford University Press 2017
He doesn't go deep into the reasons why this happens, he just acknowledges it as for what it is - a law.
The cause of this inefficiency lies within government monopoly, or to be more specific non-accountability.
I was watching a video about applications of Agile methodology in Government Agencies. The speaker was a director of the program office at a federal agency called MCC established by Congress.
Millennium Challange Corporation (MCC) is an agency with 10 billion dollar portfolio which Sujatha Augustine has helped manage, and in this video, she talks about some of the challenges that her's and other federal agencies face regarding project implementation.
The thing that instantly caught my attention is Accountability. She actually said in the video, and I quote:
YOU CAN'T FIRE PEOPLE FOR NOT ATTENDING MEETINGS.
So taxpayers are esetially stakeholders in the government project, to whom the government or/and their agencies are not accountable to.
This can never happen in the private sector and the reason why is that I, as a project manager and team behind the project, are always accountable to the stakeholders, and if something went wrong (we went heavily over budget, and behind schedule), we are going the get fired!
This just shows how a government monopoly leads to inefficiency in every single field, every single time. Without accountability in a competitive (free) market, there are no conditions for prosperity.
Yet again point proven.