Going through the procurement process itself results in massive delays (have you tried bidding on a federal government contract?), a race to the bottom (since the government more or less has to accept the lowest bid), and massive overspecification by policy writers (mostly to try to salvage some quality from these RFPs).

Echoing that Recoding America is a great book to read even if you have nothing to do with the federal government. You might see some similarities in how large companies operate.