To be fair, gov. RFPs often have so much crap in them it drives up the cost to meet their specs. Sometimes most of the specs are valid for the application, but sometimes you get a spec where they throw in every mil-spec std. they can think of where something much less would have been fine.
Then there was all the documentation and red tape and crap.
Conversely, I have seen the gov. go for the cheapest crap they can get. I still remember the boots (especially the boots!) and other clothing they gave us in the USCG - many NCOs went out and bought their own because of the poor fit and quality of the gov issue crap.
I work in contracting. I've bid on many different RFP's, including those put out by government agencies. By far, they are the worst. They are the longest (very wordy, lots of pages), very bureaucratic, full of lots of unnecessary sections, clarifications and requirements. By the very nature of how they're structured, they end up forcing the costs up over private projects, in our case, by 30% or more due to all the extra (and usually unnecessary) requirements. It irritates me to the point that I cringe when I find out we have to bid a government RFP. I think that's also why people are so flummoxed when they see the cost of government projects/contracts.