The other big issue I see in government projects is that government and other public sector organizations have a mandate to serve all citizens, even the expensive ones. Startups can choose to ignore the 20% of their potential market that is expensive to serve.
The 80/20 ratio is a huge thing, good call. Often, no service at all, or unusable crap service for everyone is politically preferable to leaving anyone out.
That play of getting those %80 features into production and leaving the %20 people to fight it out afterwards as tech and feature debt is standard product management, but it takes extra finesse in govt.
I have seen some great success stories. Seemingly simple things like QR codes for game tags, federated logins for citizens, online license and permit renewals, a city parking app, pothole reporting.
