As constituents’ digital expectations continue to rise, state governments across the U.S. are under increasing pressure to deliver reliable, personalized, and accessible digital experiences to the public.

Constituents today are seeking outcomes — like filing taxes, obtaining a business permit, or receiving benefits — at the same speed and digital maturity that they’re seeing in the private sector. Often, these outcomes interlace multiple digital touchpoints and individual services for the resident, and states have a responsibility to ensure residents are supported at every interaction, regardless of the entry point for digital access.

Furthermore, 2025 has ushered in a new wave of volatility in our current geopolitical landscape, as well as economic and political headwinds from the federal government, creating an even greater impetus for state agencies to prioritize efficiency and efficacy in service delivery.

The 2025 Digital Government Index (DGI), developed by Adobe’s digital strategy group, provides a comprehensive benchmark of digital maturity across all 50 states. Adobe created the annual Digital Government Index to understand how state governments progress in digital maturity each year and highlight key areas for improvement. Its goal is to help states benchmark their performance against peer agencies and identify strategies to advance in maturity. This year’s DGI takes on a new meaning as a tool to support agencies on their journey to improving digital access for all amid a politically dynamic period.

In its fourth year post-inception, the 2025 edition of the DGI continues to evaluate agencies across three main categories: customer experience, site performance, and digital self-service (formerly digital equity).

• Customer experience (CX) measures each state's ability to support constituents when navigating the agency’s site. Surveys were conducted among 1,000 residents from all 50 states to evaluate their respective state’s desktop and mobile digital experiences.
• Site performance measures an agency’s ability to provide a fast and functional website across devices. Adobe crawled 50,000 websites to assess desktop speed, mobile speed, SEO performance, engagement, and site health.
• Digital self-service evaluates how easily users of all ability levels can access government services. To measure this, Adobe assessed all 50 state websites for accessibility, mobile friendliness, readability, and language translation options.

This year’s DGI also introduced personalization as a separate category, evaluated through a qualitative assessment of each state’s capabilities. This personalization assessment examined the entire constituent journey at key checkpoints for accessing a common government service on the state’s main website and an associated state health and human services portal.

Our findings across the three categories along with the personalization assessment indicate improvements in site performance and digital self-service across all 50 states compared to 2024. We observed progress in omnichannel service delivery and accessibility, while also identifying areas for continued improvement in customer experience and personalization.

Key takeaways from the 2025 DGI:

• Between 2024-2025, desktop site speed improved by 16.9% and mobile site speed improved by 37.4%, indicating states are responding to constituent needs for omnichannel experiences.
• Between 2024–2025, average​ CX decreased by 2%, while site performance improved by 17%, indicating that constituent expectations are outpacing recent improvements in site functionality.
• Digital self-service scores rose, on average, by 5% from 2024 to 2025, driven primarily by expanded language translation offerings, indicating states are investing in creating more accessible services.

Below, you’ll find this year’s top performers overall and across each category:

Top five overall:

1. New York
2. Pennsylvania
3. Washington
4. Ohio
5. North Carolina

Top five performers by category:

Customer experience:

1. South Carolina
2. Mississippi
3. Alabama
4. Utah
5. Hawaii

Site performance:

1. Ohio
2. New York
3. Alabama
4. Missouri
5. Pennsylvania

Digital self-service:

1. New York
2. Texas
3. Massachusetts
4. Washington
5. North Carolina

Top four biggest movers by score:

New Jersey, Washington, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico were recognized as the most improved, each gaining 10 or more points in their DGI scores compared to 2024.

Recommendations for states.

To keep pace with advancements in private sector digital experiences, states should consider modernizing their tech stack to reinvigorate their commitment to serving the public. Embracing generative AI can further enhance content creation and service delivery at scale. Here are several actionable takeaways for state agencies from the DGI:

• Prioritize accessibility conformance: With over half of states having over 10 accessibility issues, agencies should immediately audit their digital properties and define actionable steps to meet the DOJ’s April 2026 WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance deadline.

• Invest in personalization infrastructure: States should explore scalable personalization tools — like dynamic benefit finders and AI-powered chat — to close the CX expectation gap and streamline service delivery. Agencies can also adopt cloud-native platforms and composable architectures that support omnichannel delivery, faster load times, and easier integration of AI capabilities.

• Expand multilingual and mobile-first services: The rise in digital self-service scores was driven by language translation. States should continue expanding multilingual support and ensure mobile-first design principles are applied across their sites.

• Benchmark and learn from top performers: States can study the strategies of top performers like New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington to identify replicable practices in CX, site performance, and digital self-service. You can learn more granular insights from this year’s DGI here in our 2025 U.S. DGI Report.

• Use the DGI as a strategic planning tool: Agencies can use the DGI not just as a benchmark, but as a roadmap to prioritize initiatives, allocate resources, and track progress year-over-year. Conducting a DGI assessment with Adobe can identify specific areas for improvement. Contact Amita Prabhu (amprabhu@adobe.com) for more information.

The 2025 DGI underscores the importance of digital maturity in delivering public services that are inclusive, efficient, and impactful. Government agencies today must be equipped to remain resilient amid ongoing geopolitical challenges and headwinds brought forth by the federal government. As states continue to navigate political and economic uncertainties, those that prioritize digital innovation and constituent-centric design will be best positioned to lead in the years ahead.

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