Government digital services need a big overhaul
While governments at all levels have embraced digital platforms, many citizens – particularly the most financially vulnerable – are not experiencing the benefits, research shows.
Australian government digital services need a major overhaul to better serve citizens, according to a new report that calls for a shift towards more empathetic, user-focused design emphasising simplicity, human support and real-life experiences.
Landmark research commissioned by TechnologyOne, presented in the Australian Digital Citizens 2025 report, reveals a stark disconnect between public sector digital investment and citizen satisfaction.
The report, based on feedback from 2577 people, reveals that while governments at all levels have embraced digital platforms, many citizens – particularly the most financially vulnerable – are not experiencing the benefits.
About 39.3 per cent of those surveyed struggled to find information on federal government websites, 35.1 per cent faced the same problem with local council portals and 33.1 per cent found instructions on federal digital services were confusing or unclear.
About 49.8 per cent of the citizens surveyed want more human-facing support, while 32.3 per cent want better tools to track the progress of their applications and services.
The report also underscores that digital disadvantage tracks closely with financial hardship. Citizens with lower incomes or who are unemployed are significantly more likely to feel dissatisfied or excluded from the benefits of digital service delivery.
“All levels of government should be concerned by the proportion of people who report they have not seen improvements in digital services in the past four years. Given how much has been spent on technology, this is deeply concerning,” TechnologyOne chief executive Ed Chung said.
“Citizens in more financially secure situations benefit disproportionately from online services compared to those facing financial hardship. This digital disadvantage is a critical concern. The people in the most precarious financial positions are also the ones least satisfied and least likely to use digital services. This needs to be addressed both for equity reasons, but also because focusing on this part of the community is where the biggest operational savings can be found.”
Importantly, The Digital Citizens report finds that it is not the technology failing citizens, but rather the design of it.
It says the key to improving digital service performance lies not in major new investments but in a fundamental shift towards more empathic, citizen-centric service design.
“By designing the services – the language used, the quality of the guidance about the process they are beginning – in a way that is more empathetic to the individuals using them, it should be possible to make big improvements quickly,” Mr Chung said.
Joseph Sweeney, an expert in the Future of Work and an analyst with advisory firm IBRS that wrote the report, said empathic design meant making digital government services clear, simple, accessible and backed by human support, especially for those most in need.
“We created the term ‘empathic design’ to highlight that the needed changes were not just about ‘user journeys’, ‘interfaces’ or creating new forms. It is about how we present services to real people,” Professor Sweeney said.
“To be more empathetic, service design should prioritise all citizens’ needs, experiences, and perspectives, particularly the most disadvantaged. This involves focusing on clarity and simplicity in language, instructions, navigation, avoiding jargon, and adding visual aids.
“It also requires enhancing accessibility through mobile readiness, multilingual support, and public access points, as well as ensuring seamless integration of human support for complex issues or when digital services are confusing. While agencies have made some progress in all these areas, the data clearly shows that improvements have mostly benefited citizens who already use the services, while not improving things for the Aussie battlers who have been struggling.”
Professor Sweeney said federal online services had significantly higher utilisation (88.3 per cent, compared to local government’s 55.4 per cent) and higher satisfaction (NPS of -7.19, versus -12.54 for local government).
Citizens highly value their convenience, time-saving capabilities, and 24/7 accessibility. “While local governments do have services that are simple and well-understood, and these are well rated, they also have a lot of far more complex and often critical and urgent services which are difficult to present online, so are poorly rated,” Professor Sweeney said.
“Our research suggests councils should focus on completely digitising the simple processes and collection of citizens’ requests and information, and free up staff to get on with the deeper, harder and often more important services. This not only benefits citizens but is also the most economically wise approach. You can’t digitise everything, but you can free people up to do the hard stuff.”
He noted that the federal government’s MyGov service, in particular, was seen as an “umbrella service” that successfully brought together many service options, achieving very positive ratings.
“While state services also perform better than local, the MyGov model highlights the benefit of streamlined, integrated platforms that simplify access to multiple services,” he said. “This could be a model for local governments to tackle their simpler interactions. The key learning is that councils need to leverage online service delivery as much as possible to free up staff to focus on the far more complex scenarios of citizens in urgent need of support.”
TechnologyOne executive vice-president for local government, Ben Malpass, said another priority for digitising local government services was dealing with the ageing workforce.
“Forty per cent of local government workforces in Australia and New Zealand are expected to retire in the next five to 10 years. Most council staff have been there 30 or 40 years and all of that knowledge is about to walk out the door,” Mr Malpass said.
“So how do we build that capability into technology services by leveraging the opportunity that artificial intelligence provides, especially by automating remedial tasks so that council staff can then go and deliver better services?”
Indeed, AI is expected to play a significant role in the future of government services by freeing up council team members from routine internal activities and allowing them to focus on providing more personalised support for complex issues and exceptional cases.
AI tools are also expected to speed up the development and customisation of applications, leading to faster delivery and refinement of online digital services.
But Professor Sweeney warns that there is a “need to be careful about AI hype”.
“Many people, both technical and management, misunderstand how generative AI works and its limitations. They get carried away by hype. In truth, there is no ‘intelligence’ in AI,” he said.
“Will AI replace human staff in public service delivery? No. It may make them more efficient, automate big parts of their job and let them focus on actually helping people, but it will not replace them. There is simply too much work left to do, even after AI.”