Private business operates under the pressure of competition and pleasing the consumer.
The incentive structure of bureaucracy is wholly different. They start with the money in their coffers, and try to husband it to a specific calendar date.
Businesses compete to entice the money into their coffers. So there is a push pull dynamic, regulated by the consumer, between investment in product and price reduction.
Government bureaucracy has a different set of incentives, the first being red tape to try and prevent fraud (how much triplicative sign off (that’s being generous) do you commit to for purchases when you realize you need some milk?). The other part is that in general government services (like the Secret Service) aren’t being reimbursed by their consumer, so they’re not making anything up on volume. They have X resources to stretch until next October. So money that reasonably should be spent isn’t in case you need it later, and then invariably later you have extra money and it gets spent less reasonably, because the incentive is to spend it all by October, lest you don’t get it again.
