What if I just ask pointless hypothetical questions and follow them up with no substance at all?

This is what the whole digital government movement is trying to change. Public sector organization's in the UK (GDS), Canada (CDS, ODS etc), Singapore (GovTech Singapore), even 18F in the US, are all trying (and relatively succeeding even if incrementally) to change the public sector's ability to put out quality technology services.

It doesn't happen most of the time yet, but that doesn't mean it's a gamble. I wouldn't describe it as "extremely unlikely"

We actually have figured out how to run public sector software projects successfully. It's not a mystery anymore.

There's a lot of barriers still to practicing agile service design within the constraints of most government organizations, but good results are consistent where you can carve out the space to implement it.

Look at "digital services" teams at every level of gov:

- UK Originals: https://gds.blog.gov.uk/ - US Stormers: https://18f.gsa.gov/ - US Normers: https://www.usds.gov/

- CA State Child Welfare: https://cwds.ca.gov/ - CA Benefits Enrollment: https://www.getcalfresh.org/ - CA Digital Services: https://github.com/CDTgithub/DigitalServiceOpportunities - MA Digital Services: https://www.mass.gov/orgs/digital-services

- Philadelphia: https://www.phila.gov/departments/office-of-open-data-and-di... - San Francisco: https://digitalservices.sfgov.org/ - NYC: https://playbook.cityofnewyork.us/ - Boston: https://www.boston.gov/departments/digital-team

What if I try to sell you on the notion that getting high quality is extremely unlikely by definition, otherwise it would be called average quality?