I've worked in government and commercial sectors. Big procurement organizations are a pain in any situation. Government adds some wackiness because of transparency and personal liability that procurement officers are living with.

But end of the day, if the people writing technical requirements have the time and know WTF they are talking about, it works. If you hire <vendor a> to write an RFP that <vendor b-y> responds to and <vendor z> evaluates, how could the result not be a shitshow? (Btw, that happened in a Fortune 500 org!)