NZ’s digital public services record world-best CX score, but still room to bridge the digital divide

New Zealand's ambitions for a digital government are well-established, as evidenced by the 2022 Digital Strategy for Aotearoa and the subsequent Service Modernisation Roadmap introduced in late 2024.

The roadmap takes a unified agency approach to service delivery improvement, aiming for a consistent citizen experience across all government operations. While it’s led by the Government Chief Digital Officer, it’s up to individual agencies to execute, working within the framing of the Strategy for a Digital Public Service.

According to Paul James, Government Chief Digital Officer and Chair of the Digital Executive Board, the modernisation program is likely to deliver substantial returns on investment to government.

“Scaled up across millions of customer interactions, there are opportunities for significant returns on investment from driving a more efficient, customer-centric approach to digital service delivery,” he said.

The three-year rolling horizon roadmap is built on four key pillars:

1. Enhancing the customer experience
2. Developing reusable digital components
3. Strengthening foundational systems, and;
4. Improving digital governance.

The result is a cohesive strategy designed to ensure government services are accessible, efficient and equitable for all New Zealanders. These features of digital government services map to Adobe’s industry-first evaluation framework, the Digital Government Index (DGI) for New Zealand.

The 2024 results have just been announced, showing that New Zealand agencies are in an enviable position on some measures—including a world-leading customer experience score. However, some areas aren’t improving as quickly, like digital equity, where New Zealand has typically been strong.

Measuring digital service delivery performance

Every year, Adobe conducts a benchmarking study that evaluates individual government agencies and departments on their delivery of functional and inclusive digital services. The latest suggests that recent efforts to improve the New Zealand digital government offering are paying off.

The DGI framework assesses public sector websites across three dimensions:

1. Customer Experience: via user testing of 100 citizen journeys
2. Site Performance: measuring website speed, functionality, health and authority
3. Digital Equity: scoring citizens’ ability to access, read and understand public content

The 2024 Digital Government Index for New Zealand shows improvement across all measures, continuing the positive trend since testing began in 2022. The country’s overall score has increased to 66.5 out of 100, up 11.6% on its 2023 ranking and a 14.7% lift from the inaugural 2022 result.

That positive movement has elevated New Zealand into the Intermediate maturity category, where it joins all other countries in the study. The notable upward swing is attributable to a 14% improvement in Customer Experience—the highest-ranked score globally on that dimension—and a 13% increase in Site Performance. While the Digital Equity dimension also enjoyed an uptick, the more modest result suggests that further work is needed to ensure all citizens have access to services, regardless of language, literacy or operational diversity. For example, agencies should ensure key information can be easily understood by all citizens by making it available different formats such as text and video, and translating it into multiple languages.

Global rankings

New Zealand ranked third globally, behind the United Kingdom and Australia, and scored higher than the United States and its regional peers, India and Singapore.

The worldwide DGI analysis extended to 102 agency websites in 2024. Australia’s myGov achieved the top score of all global websites, with French Administration and French Retirement rounding out the top three.

The highest-ranking websites shared common traits: they acted as a front door for easier citizen access to the government services ecosystem, had strong accessibility credentials and were more likely to offer more personalised journeys than their peers. New Zealand’s top-rated agency was the Ministry of Education, achieving consistent results across all three dimensions.

Maintaining trust in the age of AI

Artificial intelligence is a key enabler for government ambitions, helping to accelerate the delivery of personalised citizen experiences through scalable technologies. While many agencies focus on using AI to streamline day-to-day tasks, it is not just a tool for automation—it’s a critical component in shaping a modern, citizen-centric public sector. Success in delivering the Service Modernisation Roadmap will hinge on using AI tools like digital asset management to facilitate the high-quality, personalised experiences that drive stronger public engagement.

Maximising the potential of AI means taking a strategic approach to implementation, ensuring systems are secure, trusted and implemented in ways that promote fairness and public confidence—an ethos that underlies the national New Zealand approach to AI and development of frameworks and guidelines to govern its use. For Paul James, it’s a balance between the pursuit of efficiencies and maintaining citizen confidence.

“Harnessing AI effectively could significantly improve customer experience and boost efficiency and productivity. The Government is seeking to enable AI innovation in public services to create value for New Zealanders while maintaining trust and confidence in the Public Service,” he said.

Pathways to experience-driven government

The 2024 DGI evaluation enhances our understanding of digital government service delivery in New Zealand. While an uplift in all three categories is encouraging, scores at an individual agency level are mixed, with no organisation outperforming on all three measures.

As the government continues to modernise the delivery of its digital services and strives for greater performance and inclusion, it’s apparent that all three measures must work together to make an impact. This will be particularly important as technology advances rapidly and citizen expectations move higher.

While digital accessibility is a focus for governments globally, these efforts must address a broader range of citizen needs. Combining accessibility capabilities with a more personalised, data-driven approach can drive participation and service usage for a more diverse cross-section of the population.

Our deeper assessment of agencies’ personalisation capabilities and technology stacks confirms that more mature agencies tend to achieve higher Index scores.

This year’s assessment shows commendable progress, but there is room to expand inclusion efforts. By leveraging technology to enable personalisation, government agencies can strengthen citizen relationships and meet the national goal of fostering trust, inclusion and growth.

To learn more, please download the Adobe Digital Government Index for New Zealand 2024.

About Adobe’s Digital Government Index for New Zealand 2024

Adobe’s Digital Strategy Group undertook the research for the annual DGI between June and September 2024. Five New Zealand government agencies and departments were part of the analysis, forming part of the 102 analysed globally. The three core measures of Customer Experience, Site Performance and Digital Equity are each assigned a score out of 100, with the average comprising the overall Index reading. This year, additional deep dive analysis was undertaken to evaluate capabilities related to accessibility, personalisation and technology maturity.