I've worked extremely close to the government and, yes, everything about the process screamed inefficiency in the name of positions and purchases not being abused. So you spend massively inflated amounts as a result of that bureaucracy for subpar quality (because a lot of people who can easily find alternatives don't have the patience to deal with the red tape, leading to an over-time retention bias towards the mediocre).

I disagree that firing isn't a big part of it, but you can't just have more firing. You need to let managers do their jobs in a way that isn't just following a checklist in a binder, which also involves hiring latitude, pay latitude, etc. All stuff that could be abused, but some abuse is better than uniform shit quality at high expense.

One easy example from both government and big industry: how much money do we spend on sending people to get mediocre extra degrees from mediocre schools that don't actually have anything to do with their job responsibilities but is a requirement for a certain promotion level?