"Overlapping government programs cost billions".....

[JoePhilly]

4. Overlapping functions exist in every large corporation and also cost billions.

Large organizations, whether public or private, have significant overlap efforts. It is a rather natural characteristic of larger organizations.

Its important to note that this is not always a bad thing. In many cases, the "overlapping" efforts overlap in their goal, but they are each taking different approaches to the same problem, and at some point, one of those effots will be determined to be the best path forward. And the others go away or are absorbed.

In a sense, it is an "internal" competition.

The idea that large organizations are ultra efficient and there is little overlap of effort is false. The world is not black and white. And organizations with very different mandates can find themselves creating overlapping efforts to deal with amorphous problems that span organizational boundaries.