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Short answer: Government will never be run the same way as a business, because when Government fails, it doesn't go out of business.

Where's the incentive for more efficient utilization of worker time, salaries, resources? Where's the drive to enhance productivity and improve services? When your "revenue" is the taxing power, and where it is illegal for the "consumer" of government services to "vote with her wallet" and "opt out" of having her wealth conscripted for the politicians pork projects, where is the incentive to consume less?

Unfortunately the desire for self-aggrandizement that is present in all human beings doesn't stop when the Government is paying the tab. Accordingly, the inherent tendency for empire building runs amok.

The ONLY example of efficiency of government that I have seen in my lifetime is when Mayor Mike Bloomberg consolidated all of the City's 4000 service telephone numbers and 40 call centers into a single 3-1-1. This way, he could measure how many calls they were actually getting and try to allocate resources accordingly. He also deployed Siebel/Interwoven CRM software to help the process.

Our City, BTW, has an annual operating budget of around $40 Billion. Services are excellent, if you remember the problems of the Dinkins Administration.

Pop quiz: What did Bloomberg do before he was Mayor?