Even my VPS with no public facing content sees a great many attempts at unauthorized access.

So the problem then, is not any "hacking spree" on government agencies, the real problem is government agencies failure to implement acceptable security measures.

The government knows it will always have a soft exterior due to it's size. This is why they have air-gaps and such strict policies.

A lot of people give the government a ton of flack for how poorly they work but for an entity of their size they do a pretty good job. I'm not saying there isn't obvious room for improvement but they do a fairly good job. Other countries of similar size have much larger infosec issues than the US....you just don't hear about them.

The thing is that they have very little control over the hacking attempts. They do have control over what they build themselves.

It's tempting to say the hackers are the bad guys, but morality isn't a helpful tool in situations like these. They may as well be an act of god for all the difference it makes.

Much of the technical mistakes made by the contractors aren't due to poor engineering it's a lack of funding. Lots of the contracts put out are Lowest Cost Technically Acceptable due to budget problems beyond the control of the people making the decisions.

I'm not making any comments on right or wrong.

So to take healthcare.gov as an example those over worked under paid contractors got something on the order of 300 million. You think the problem was that the project was _under_ funded? Government Contractors more often than not get paid obscene amounts of money for the work they do.

I don't see how that makes any difference at all.

it's a lack of funding

That's really a problem of poor management.

Another “widespread problem” is government agencies conducting mass surveillance.

If so many "forget the name" agencies weren't really covers for tingly super secret spy stuffs, then maybe more people would give up and go away from the truly boring ones???