> What I meant by accountability is deeper: people are not accountable for the quality or utility of their work, hence the endless tidal wave of corrupt and deceptive research that pours out of government funded 'science' every day. These researchers probably filled out their expenses paperwork correctly but the final resulting paper was an exercise in circular reasoning, or the data tables were made up, or it was P-hacked or whatever. And nobody in government cares or even notices, because nobody is held accountable for the quality of the outputs.
Have you ever received and administered a grant? I have to ask. You seem pretty certain about how it works, but it just doesn't match with my experience.
You say that there's no accountability in results and this leads to people committing fraud. In my experience, fraud happens when there is too high of an expectation that researchers can't meet. Let's say you get a $5 million grant to do X, and in the course of doing X you find out it's not possible. You have a negative result. First of all, good luck publishing a negative result. Without that publication, good luck getting the next grant.
High expectations for results incentivize fraud. There should be room for researchers to come up short with their research and still be able to progress in their careers. But when grants dry up, the publications dry up and then your career is derailed by failing to get tenure.
The fact is that not everyone can be researching world-changing technologies. That's just not a realistic expectation. Even Google can't do that, as much as you laud a profit motive (how many Google projects are in the trash right now?). But that's what we expect of everyone who gets grant money, precisely for the reason that people have an expectation that an immediate and tangible ROI must be demonstrated.
I don't know if you consider people at funding agencies like the NSF as part of the government, but they do notice when projects fall short, and they do deny 80% of grant applications (I would consider that accountability).