The process of changing that process itself is what is completely different between public sector and private sector though. Change from within is extremely tough to begin with and companies with truly bad, inefficient processes will likely be out-innovated by companies that can actually organize to deliver results and that doesn't happen in the DC bureaucracy culture, you just get less funding and your agency starts to look ancient and obsolete. For tech companies that become obsolete, they become more sales culture driven and tend to stick with non-tech customers in the F500 that are even further behind technology / process improvement curves.

The kinds of folks that stay at jobs for 20+ years and retire are very, very different from the HN style job hopping motivated go-getters and it impacts work output drastically in large numbers. DC has a lot of the really motivated types, but they are oftentimes not doing the tech work.

I've been a federal employee, contractor, employee of F500 companies, small regional company, two-person start-up, and start-up employee for some frame of reference.

But people created those processes and people keep then in use. So aren't people really the issue even if process is the visible issue?