And what are the incentives of the people in the government agency? You seem to assume that absent financial incentives they will behave altruistically. I would

And what are the incentives of the people in the government agency? You seem to assume that absent financial incentives they will behave altruistically. I would argue that part of the reason agencies have those financial incentives is to give them a reason to perform that task at all. Government employees are not a cadre of uniformly civic minded people. Just like everyone else, they tend to seek to maximize their own benefit. Without financial incentive, it can be other motives, like the desire for power or to avoid work. As an example, a friend of mine was engaged to a fellow who worked as a mailman in New York. His mail route took him 2 hours to complete, but officially it took him all day. After he completed his mail route, he'd go to the gym, run errands, etc, then show up at the end of the day to clock out. Apparently he was far from alone in this. The mail routes had been established long before and were passed on from carrier to carrier, none challenging the fiction that gave them so much free time. Their supervisors must have been aware of this given how long it had been going on, but apparently they had no incentive to interfere. Another example: there was a precinct in the Bronx many years ago where the police would fulfill their parking ticket quota by going down a block and issuing tickets to every car, regardless of meter state. People who lived in the area were aware of this and regularly contested the tickets. Eventually someone noticed that the contest rate was extremely high and almost always successful and they got in trouble. They apparently felt no incentive to ensure that their ticketing raised revenue for the city or encouraged meter use. Their sole motive was meeting the quota. I could list many other examples of where government employees, without incentives to do their job, did them poorly or not at all. High profile ones like the police are actually more accountable than many of the smaller agencies. In my experience it's not unusual to find yourself waiting for days for a person to sign a piece of paper which is sitting on their desk. Clearly that person is not being evaluated on whether your needs get attention and no other motive is at play. But this is actually one of the more successful outcomes. In many places, bribery is necessary to get people to do their job. In short, incentives are always a problem, public or private. In order to get things done well, it is necessary that incentives are constructed properly. That takes effort and instances of failure to do it properly abound for both public and private institutions.