I'm not alluding to a specific case, but I think it's a pretty good analogy for how contracted government projects are run in general (at least in the UK, but I don't see why it would be different elsewhere).

Citizens hold their government to a higher standard. As an analogy, the government can't just go to the hardware store to buy a hammer. It needs to buy a hammer from an American using a drawn out bidding process that preferences veterans and minorities, etc etc. Iterate this for evey little thing.

That isn't fraud or corruption as most folks understand those terms. It is more simply not designing for efficiency. People are more concerned with other factors like fairness transparent process.

More realistically, it needs to buy the hammer from a political donor, a family member or friend of a politician, or some other politically connected person. The hammer will cost many times as much as anyone else would pay for it, and may well be the wrong kind of hammer or otherwise defective, assuming it's delivered at all. If a bidding process is used, the criteria will usually have been designed to favour a predetermined winner.

Is there data on how widespread the phenomenon you are concerned about is?