Governments tend to be far less competent at determining technical competence. Due to a wide variety of factors, governments tend to be completely uncompetitive in salary for technical positions meaning they're already hiring from the lower end of the pool (not including a few altruistic folks willing to forgo their market value).

At a company if a department isn't working out you just restructure and move on, but in the government, that team is going to retire in your org and collect pension from you, and there's very little you can do about that.