A $20 million blunder

The Press reports:

Senior public servants failed to pick up a payment blunder for more than a year, costing the Ministry of Education more than $20 million.

The mistake occurred when a 4 percent funding boost to about 2000 early-childhood centres was allocated twice in the same round, meaning more than $20 million was over-spent.

An internal report obtained under the Official Information Act said human error involving an inexperienced and overworked ministry staff member led to the original funding mistake.

It was compounded by a poor peer review that meant the error went undetected for 14 months.

My question is, where is the accountability? If you worked for a private company and you made a mistake that cost the company $20 million, you would no longer be working there.