I would say that Agile processes is definitely a part of solution (and I have been part of Agile teams and implemented Agile processes within the government), especially because of the oversight it can allow.
What eventually happens is that to give oversight to the decision makers on a sufficiently large project, your dev leads spend all day in status update meetings with scrum masters, who spend all day in status update meetings with project managers, who spend all day in status update meetings with directors and functional leads. Decisions are made a level above that, so you've got 5 levels of management in a big game of telephone.
It's still probably better than the alternative, but Agile doesn't give you the certainty around schedule and budget that waterfall does. There's a mindset in the government that often manages around schedule and budget ONLY; so it will take rooting out several generations of government project managers to really start to crack the problem.
Like I said, I don't envy the guy. But his bar for success is so low that it would be hard not to improve things.