The thing is that money is not being "wasted" at all. It's profit for someone.
Just like healthcare & education, building big infrastructure projects lines the pockets of everyone even tangentially involved, so there is no incentive to change anything. People are literally making millions of dollars.
Transparency is the solution to that. For some reason, you also left out one of the largest government contracting sectors in the USA, i.e. military and intelligence procurement and contracting - where the waste is more extreme, as it can be hidden behind classification on 'national security grounds'.
Of course it's wasted. If you paid for a service and received no service in return you typically call that fraud. Why would it be different in this case, because someone received "profit" for doing nothing it's all ok?
Well, yes, of course. That is specifically how many systems are run in the USA. Healthcare, Education, Prisons, Infrastructure, military, government contracts.
They're designed to suck money and resources away from the good of society to line the pockets of a few. They do a very good job of it.
Just like healthcare & education, building big infrastructure projects lines the pockets of everyone even tangentially involved, so there is no incentive to change anything. People are literally making millions of dollars.