How do I stay patient when change in government is so slow?

You came to the public sector with drive, and the slowness grinds against it. You want to move, and the system moves in inches. That friction is the mark of someone who still cares, so do not mistake your impatience for a reason to give up. It helps to change what you measure. In slow-moving systems, progress rarely looks like a single win you can point to. It looks like a small policy nudged, a process made a little less painful, a relationship built that pays off two years later. The scale is longer than you are used to, but the work is real. Judging it by the speed of a startup will only exhaust you. Set your sights on one improvement you could actually finish this year, however small, and pour your drive into that. Let the slowness be the weather, not the enemy. You will last far longer, and do more good, by aiming your energy at what will actually move than by burning it against what will not.