Yep. Governments, by virtue of being the functional backstop on all possible negative outcomes, necessarily runs with enormous slack. The ones that do not simply break under stress and they're replaced over and over until a government emerges that figures out that extreme efficiency is a liability.

Not to mention the US government in particular was quite literally deliberately designed to be inefficient as a way to safeguard personal liberties as well.

Not to say we shouldn't cut inefficiencies where we can, but the early DOGE promises were obviously made from a place of profound ignorance and (worse) lack of curiosity.