First. Government waste is well known. Helping people via committee of bureaucrats is never good.
Second. The reason government does military is simply because we can not put that in the hands of private corps. I am sure until they use it to take over though we would have better equipment and better training for less money though.
Third. We can play the trace back game all you want. The truth is that prior to private enterprise the internet and the web sucked. I mean really sucked. Government has a role. Military, Infrastructure, Law Enforcement, Minimal regulation of shared things, and R&D on things that have no known commercial applications, or things where commercial application is too far off or to big of a capital investment yet is good for the public. Space travel, Internet, New Energies, Pure Science.
The government needs to step back from things it started. Moon landing not possible without government starting. Asteroid mining, orbital factories and colonization not possible without companies looking for a profit.
I remember Gopher. I remember when there were no real "Search Engines" just lists of places in categories of the internet. Google is what happens when people do things. Not governments.