The private sector is very much the same, just look at SAP. You only hear less about it because their budgets aren't as detailed and few people care about waste

The private sector is very much the same, just look at SAP. You only hear less about it because their budgets aren't as detailed and few people care about waste that isn't paid for by their taxes. While I also feel the temptation to yell "I could do it for 1/100th of that" at a screen when I read/hear about these projects, just basic probability suggests that I'm probably wrong. It's me (with as little enterprise" experience as I could manage) vs a whole lot of people that don't strike me as particularly stupid and who have lots of incentives to keep costs down.