It's not entirely bad, not everywhere —some countries are quite advanced in that regard, notably in Europe. However I'm evoking a deeper system; i.e. creating the "software information system of states", automating the hell out of it, building some Amazon-like octopus of goodness at the service of everything public = property of all citizens.

Relevant buzzwords: State as an Open-source Service (StaaOS)

I share your concerns for gov efficiency; a common reasonable idea seems to make a "hybrid institution" e.g. create an independent agency run by citizens, with a governance model a la NGO / not-for-profit.

An ideal management, imho, would involve various 'captains' of the tech industry (I'd say there's a pool of at least 10,000 people fitting that bill on earth today, i.e. ~1 per mil., and I'm possibly low-balling it by orders of magnitude). The structure should definitely be mission-driven (probably architected much like a business). Several countries enjoy great success (in quality, cost, etc.) with such types of agencies.

On the doing-actual-work level, governments aren't really different from private companies, so one shouldn't expect dramatically different outcomes.

The idea that governments' actions should strive for some more idealistic goals isn't entirely wrong. But then again: why should we expect less from private citizens and corporations? They are just as much part of society, have rather more power to influence the software market, and tend to have more money to spent (I've recently seen a government office still using CRT).

But mandating open standards: yeah, totally.

Often because they don't have the required knowledge in house, so they hire consultants. And consultants will propose "safe" solutions = solutions that look good on paper and are easily defendable or quantifyable.

It's easier to defend a huge company like SAP, MS or ... than an unknown underdog. Even more so when that big corp often invites you to tech nights and similar learning opportunities whereas small opensource projects have no marketing budget to swoon, wine and dine those consultants.

You need not be baffled. The software industry is good at lobbying.

A case that deserves to be taken as an example of lobbying: the German city of Munich, which in 2003 started moving all desktop workstations to Linux, and by the end of 2012 reported a huge success with savings amounting to 11 million Euros, but in 2017 they announced they would migrate back to Windows, probably because of this: https://www.novinite.com/articles/155950/Munich+Set+to+Becom...