How can we make government constantly increase its efficiency like private enterprises do?

It has become a common meme in America (and much of the free world, I think) that government is always inefficient at everything it does. The meme is often, but not always true.

In one of my first jobs, I worked for Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Corp. (Now owned by Northrop Grumman) We had to bid against the Norfolk Naval Shipyard for contracts, and we always underbid them. The Navy arbitrarily awarded some of its contracts to the Naval Shipyard just to keep it open in case it was again needed for war. But Newport News Ship was able to pay corporate taxes, pay shareholders and earn a profit—none of which the Naval Shipyard had to do—and yet still underbid the government run facility. And Newport News Ship paid really good wages and offered great benefits to its workers. It was a union shop.

On the other hand, the Social Security Administration is an example of an efficient government program. Their 2009 administrative costs were just 0.9%. Typical private, for-profit retirement funds run total costs of 5% or more. The Veterans Administration delivers high quality healthcare to vets for far less than the same care would cost if delivered by private industry. Our military could certainly be more efficient, but its costs per man in the field are far lower than private, for-profit security firms such as Blackwater (now Xe). And there are very obvious potentials for conflicts of interest should we outsource our military to a private corporation.

In areas such as fire protection, prisons, policing, industry oversight and our military; there are grave potentials for conflicts of interest between the profit motive and public welfare and safety. So it makes sense to resist privatization and instead figure out how to run these programs at a lower cost than private, for-profit industry can deliver.

So what differs between those examples of government programs that do work efficiently and all the others that do not? For those things government clearly should supply, what can we do to make it more efficient than private enterprise?