Key takeaways
- Satisfaction with government services at the federal and provincial levels in Canada is lower than for private-sector peers.
- A majority of survey respondents do not feel they can navigate Canadian government services without assistance.
- The most important services for Canadians’ overall satisfaction are often those that they are least satisfied with.
- Focusing on just a few of the most important services and journeys—including finding a family doctor and employment insurance—could have an outsize impact on overall experience while also providing additional benefits to the government and the public.
There is little existing research on Canadians’ experience with government services. Our “Pulse on the Provinces” study—the most extensive experience in government study ever conducted in Canada—begins to address this gap. It analyzes responses from approximately 5,700 residents nationwide regarding their experiences with services provided by both provincial and federal governments (see sidebar, “About the research”).
By answering pivotal questions in four areas, the study seeks to help public service providers understand the experience they provide and the opportunities they have for improving their service delivery:
- Value at stake. Does this matter? Is there a compelling value proposition for improving Canadians’ experience with government services? For example, can enhanced experiences be linked to critical outcomes such as trust, civic engagement, and operational efficiency?
- Performance. How do Canadians rate their experiences with government services? How does this compare across Canada and with international benchmarks?
- Where the puck is going. Looking ahead, what will be most important to Canadians in terms of service delivery?
- Where to start. Are all services equally important in enhancing overall experience? In a resource-constrained environment, where can leaders focus their efforts to achieve the greatest ROI?
This research reveals that the Canadian public sector has work to do to improve customer experience. But it also suggests that focusing on just a few of the most important services and journeys could have an outsize impact on overall customer experience while also providing additional benefits to the government and the public.
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Experience matters: What good experience does for government and the public
Our research shows experience matters for Canadian public services. Specifically, our data identifies a few quantitative benefits of positive experience: increased trust in government; higher voting propensity; and lower cost to serve, increased satisfaction, and improved employee experience.
Increased trust in government
In Canada, a 1.0 percent increase in service satisfaction is correlated with a roughly 0.8 percent increase in trust in government, depending on the province and level of government (Exhibit 1). At the same time, three of the four top-scoring provinces for trust have the highest overall satisfaction scores in Canada, reinforcing the correlation between high trust in government and overall service satisfaction.
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A scatter plot depicts Canadians’ satisfaction rates for various provincial services (x axis) and their level of trust that the service provider was acting in their best interests (y axis). The chart reveals that higher satisfaction is almost always correlated with higher trust. For example, for one service, just over 20 percent of respondents were satisfied and also trusted that the service provider was acting in their best interests. For another service, about 50 percent were satisfied and 45 percent trusted the service provider was acting in their best interests. For yet another, about 70 percent were satisfied and 65 percent trusted the service provider was acting in their best interests.
Source: McKinsey Pulse on the Provinces Survey, 2024 (n = 5,692); responses on individual services vary based on incidence)
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Given the difference between the least trusted and most trusted service providers at both the provincial and federal levels, there is a big opportunity to increase trust through improving experience.
Higher voting propensity
Canadians satisfied with their public service experience were 21 percent more likely to report that they always vote in elections, as compared with their dissatisfied or very dissatisfied counterparts.
There are differences in correlation between voting propensity and overall satisfaction with government services among different age groups. For instance, respondents between 18 and 34 years old are 6 percent more likely to vote if they indicate high satisfaction with government services. This increased propensity is higher for older age groups: Respondents older than 45 are 13 percent more likely to vote if they indicate high satisfaction with government services.
Lower cost to serve, improved public sentiment, and increased employee engagement and experience
Increasing experience satisfaction can also meaningfully affect government in other ways. For example, it can decrease costs by reducing call center volume by 13 percent and in-person visits by 5 percent. Improving experience can also decrease negative public sentiment for most services by more than 20 percent. Dissatisfied Canadians are more likely to publicly express discontent with provincial governments. This, in turn, can drive negative press and cause Canadians to reach out to service providers or call centers to complain, which increases the cost to serve by requiring more people to answer phones and deal with complaints.
We also know that organizations that deliver strong services are better places to work. Employees in organizations with leading experiences are up to 30 percentage points more engaged at work than employees at comparable workplaces with weaker experiences.1 Thus, improving experience is an effective win–win, in which Canadians have better experiences with their governments and public servants can be more satisfied with their jobs.
Canadian government satisfaction rates are lagging behind
Satisfaction in government services at the federal and provincial levels falls behind that of private-sector peers.2 The highest-ranking private-sector service provider we surveyed had a 57 percent satisfaction rating, while Canadian provincial governments had a 39 percent satisfaction rating and federal government services had an 18 percent satisfaction rating, on average (Exhibit 2). This challenge is not unique to Canada. When similar questions were asked of 79,000 Americans in McKinsey’s State of the States Survey in 2022, US state government had a 28 percent average satisfaction rating and the US federal government had a 15 percent satisfaction rating.3
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A bar chart shows the percentage of survey respondents who are satisfied1 with a handful of private sector services (bank or credit union, e-commerce site, grocery store, credit card, and mobile phone), as well as the average satisfaction rate for Canadian provincial and federal government services and US state and federal government services. The chart reveals that all five of these government inputs receive lower satisfaction scores than the private sector inputs. The smallest satisfaction gap between the public and private sector is 11 percentage points, and the largest is 42 percentage points.
Footnote 1: Percent of Canadians who indicated they were satisfied or strongly satisfied with their indicated service provider or their federal services; percent of Americans who selected 9 or 10 on a scale of 1 to 10 for satisfaction.
Source: McKinsey Pulse on the Provinces Survey, 2024 (n = 5,692); responses on individual services vary based on incidence); McKinsey State of the States Survey, 2022 (n = 78,587)
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Below, we break these satisfaction ratings down by the federal and provincial levels and by demographic group.
Federal level
At the federal level, our research shows that certain departments have inconsistent service between regions. In certain regions, the same department has a service satisfaction gap of up to 33 percentage points for the same federal service compared with other provinces. For example, a service such as passport renewal delivered in Ontario might have a very different experience profile than that same service delivered in Manitoba, even though they’re overseen by the same federal department (the Ministry of Employment and Social Development of Canada). This variability suggests an opportunity to standardize service delivery across Canada.
Provincial level
There is significant variability in experience satisfaction with different provincial governments. The highest-ranking province had a satisfaction rating 20 percentage points higher than the lowest (Exhibit 3). And the delta between provinces on the same journey is as much as 43 percentage points.
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A bar chart shows the average percent of Canadians who are satisfied or strongly satisfied with their experience with provincial services, broken out by province. Satisfaction rates range from just 28 percent to 48 percent. The Big 4 provinces—Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec—are all in the bottom five for service satisfaction.
Source: McKinsey Pulse on the Provinces Survey, 2024 (n = 5,692); responses on individual services vary based on incidence
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This variation indicates two points—first, that there are areas ripe for improvement in terms of government service delivery across Canada, and second, that in many cases, relatively better experience is possible. Of course, provinces operate in different contexts: Some serve millions of Canadians while others serve hundreds of thousands. At the same time, the provinces have different service delivery methods and operating models within each. By recognizing these nuances, higher-scoring provinces can still serve as bright spots to inspire and inform leaders on how to deliver improved experience.
Demographic group
There is a nearly 30-percentage-point spread between the most- and least-satisfied demographic groups across all public services (Exhibit 4).
In terms of overall satisfaction with federal and provincial-level services, men are consistently more satisfied than women and diverse-gender respondents. Older, wealthier, and urban populations are also highly satisfied, at ten, 14, and five percentage points above average, respectively. These differences become more pronounced at the individual service level, with visible minorities, lower-income individuals, and urban or rural populations indicating significantly lower satisfaction than peers.
Across age groups, young Canadians aged 18 to 24 report one of the lowest rates of satisfaction with government services, at nine percentage points below average satisfaction. Younger individuals may be newer to government services and also be digital natives. These scores, then, may reflect the fact that many services still require in-person touchpoints, which can be inconvenient for those with less-flexible work or childcare commitments. Additionally, if services are delivered in person, there may also be room for bias against individuals from certain demographic groups and less accessibility for digital natives. Similar patterns can be seen in various demographic groups—for example, those who identify as “other” as it relates to gender.4
Where the puck is going: Canadians’ expectations for future service
More than half of surveyed Canadians expect that they will be able to access all government services online within five years. They also expect a “tell me once” experience: Nearly half of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the federal government should share information across service providers, alleviating the need for Canadians to update information across different systems. Forty-four percent believe that information should be shared with provincial government bodies to remove the need to share context in different places. And more than half of respondents over the age of 25 expect that they will be able to authenticate themselves with one set of credentials for all government services within five years.
To enable this type of future, more than 40 percent of all respondents state they would want a single identity or identity document for all government services. Going even further, more than 40 percent of respondents stated that both the provincial and federal governments should help Canadians find services or benefits that they are eligible for.
That said, young Canadians don’t expect that government is up to the challenge of improving digital access to government services. The 18 to 24 age group has consistently lower expectations than any other age bracket: They are up to 17 percentage points less likely than other age groups to believe that the government is equipped to effectively offer and process services online. They are also about five percentage points less likely than other age groups to agree that the government should help them find services they might be eligible for.
Not all journeys or channels are created equal
In aggregate, some journeys matter more than others when it comes to overall experience satisfaction. Across Canada’s federal and provincial levels, our research showed that services that were the “most important” or consequential for driving overall satisfaction were often those with the lowest satisfaction (Exhibit 5).
At the federal level, of the five most important services for Canadians, two were among the lowest-scoring: immigration services and employment insurance (including parental leave benefits). In fact, only three of the top eight most important services score high in satisfaction—that is, above 50 percent. And these just barely pass this threshold.
At the provincial level, there are also several services that are below average in terms of aggregate importance and that rank low in terms of satisfaction but are likely deeply consequential for those who rely on them—such as provincial disability benefits and workers’ compensation. Other lesser-used but still essential services, such as finding a family doctor (which we know is affected by external forces such as supply), see similarly low rates of satisfaction: For example, 31 percent are satisfied with finding a family doctor.
Generally, more-transactional journeys, such as licensing, typically score higher than direct services and public benefit services. Across Canadian provincial services, the three highest-scoring services are vehicle registration (65 percent satisfaction), driver’s licensing (62 percent satisfaction), and public health insurance and health card services (57 percent satisfaction).
As governments look to improve their overall public service experience, this snapshot can provide a road map of the services to tackle first—namely, those that are highly used and important but currently have low satisfaction and thus most negatively affect overall experience.
Satisfaction varies across journey stages
Satisfaction across individual journey stages, such as “apply” and “wait,” varies as well, with key stages disproportionately affecting overall Canadian experience satisfaction. Interestingly, across services with relatively high satisfaction, the most important journey stage often has relatively low satisfaction. This suggests that even high-performing services have room for improvement.
For example, driver’s licensing is a leader in provincial service satisfaction. In this journey, “apply” is the most important stage for determining overall satisfaction and has an average satisfaction across provinces of 66 percent. This is significantly lower than the best-in-class province for this journey stage, which has 86 percent satisfaction (Exhibit 6).
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A spline chart plots the percent of respondents who were satisfied or strongly satisfied with each stage of the driver’s license service journey, as well as the importance of each stage for overall service satisfaction. Stages comprise learn (obtain information about the service), apply (submit application), get help with the application, wait for processing, receive the service, use the service, and update (make changes to enrollment information). The chart has two lines: one for the average experience satisfaction and one for the best-in-class experience satisfaction. The chart reveals that the “apply” stage is most important stage for satisfaction, at 39 percent. Average satisfaction is 66 percent, 20 percentage points lower than the best-in-class satisfaction, indicating an opportunity area. Learn (19 percent) and receive (16 percent) are the next-most-important stages and similarly see significant gaps between the average and best-in-class satisfaction.
Source: McKinsey Pulse on the Provinces Survey, 2024 (n = 5,692); responses on individual services vary based on incidence
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At the same time, prioritization is required. While “update” has the largest gap between average satisfaction across provinces (64 percent) and best-in-class satisfaction for the leading province (100 percent), Canadians say it is one of the least important journey stages for overall satisfaction, so it’s not the most important place to begin efforts to improve public service experience.
What drives satisfaction across services?
Key drivers, such as clarity, reliability, and simplicity, account for satisfaction across services. Generally, satisfaction does not vary significantly across drivers, but Canadians are most satisfied with professionalism and speediness (Exhibit 7). There isn’t a strong correlation between importance and performance, indicating an opportunity to redeploy focus to areas that are more likely to drive an increase in satisfaction, such as clarity and speediness.
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A two-part bar chart shows the importance of various drivers for overall satisfaction across services, as well as Canadians’ satisfaction with these drivers. Drivers comprise clarity, speediness, transparency, reliability, responsiveness, simplicity, and professionalism. Importance does not vary significantly, but clarity and speediness are the top two. Likewise, satisfaction with these drivers is between 41 and 45 percent for most drivers. The biggest gap is between transparency (36 percent) and professionalism (48 percent). Despite being the driver that Canadians are most satisfied with, professionalism is the lowest-rated driver in terms of importance. This highlights an opportunity for governments to focus efforts on improving satisfaction with the drivers rated most important.
Source: McKinsey Pulse on the Provinces Survey, 2024 (n = 5,692); responses on individual services vary based on incidence
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Preferred channels for government services
Across channels—including in-person, over the phone, and mail—the most used are also the most preferred (Exhibit 8). While in-person is the most used and preferred, it is also the most resource-intensive for governments to manage.
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A column chart shows Canadians’ use of and preference for several channels: in person or at a government office, over the phone, mail, website, email, mobile application, text message, and fax. Generally, the most used channels are the most preferred, with the exception of mail, which is highly used but not preferred. About a third of respondents said they preferred in person, over the phone, and email. And in person is the most used channel, at 48 percent, with over the phone second, at 44 percent. Fax is both the least used and least preferred.
Source: McKinsey Pulse on the Provinces Survey, 2024 (n = 5,692); responses on individual services vary based on incidence
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We found that more than 60 percent of surveyed Canadians do not feel they can easily navigate government services without assistance, pointing to challenges in clarity when accessing services. This likely also drives up the use of more costly in-person or over-the-phone channels for the many Canadians who need support in making sense of the process to access government services.
These challenges lead Canadians to switch channels frequently: 65 percent of respondents needed to switch channels at least once to access their service or services. Switching channels affects Canadians’ level of satisfaction, decreasing it by 13 percent, on average, for those who switch. Across the board, channel switching drives down experience; those who dislike it most are the individuals who prefer to engage through digital channels. As expectations regarding access to digital channels rise, this will become increasingly important.
Recognizing this, leaders can invest in creating end-to-end experiences within an individual channel, especially digital, so individuals can meet their goals more easily. Many digital channels were newly created or built out during the pandemic, and we see that they lead in convenience and speed for Canadians but lack in terms of supportiveness. In fact, while 27 percent of Canadians turn to in-person channels because they are supportive, only 11 percent feel the same way about digital channels, which is on par with how they feel about mailing in paper forms.
Simply mirroring processes digitally won’t be enough to ensure Canadians’ experience satisfaction; there are highly valued elements of the in-person and over-the-phone experience, such as supportiveness, that should be replicated, as well, to support satisfaction. When exploring digital options, leaders must have a robust understanding of what makes current experiences great and how to replicate those features.
Path to impact
This article has made the case that there is an opportunity to improve the experience provided by government from coast to coast. In addition to a better experience in many instances, evidence suggests that improving experience will have knock-on effects for many other benefits, such as lower cost-to-serve, increased civic engagement, and higher trust in government. The question is how to go about making this change.
Improving experience isn’t an easy task, and it’s made more complex by the public sector’s unique context. The public sector faces a host of distinct challenges that can make it harder to start and sustain the transformative efforts needed to improve Canadians’ experience with public services. In fact, our research suggests that up to 80 percent of public-sector transformation efforts fail to meet their intended objectives.5 This is, in part, because governments tend to start from behind on many of the capabilities needed to improve experience, such as digital and AI, and government’s legacy technology architecture is often uniquely outdated. Governments also have a mandate to serve all citizens regardless of cost-to-serve, so they don’t have the option (unlike their private-sector peers) to completely sunset costly service channels in preference of those that are more automated or cost-effective. Moreover, senior leaders in government tend to be reassigned more frequently than those in the private sector. As a result, the central galvanizing vision behind transformation programs of any flavor are sometimes muddled (or worse, lost) in the transition. For example, a review of ministers of health across 23 countries between 1990 and 2009 found that the mean time of service was 18 months6—not a long time when it comes to transformative change.
However, public-sector leaders can take a few actions to tip the scales in their favor, improving their odds of harnessing the compound benefits of improved experience.
Align government leaders around a citizen-backed business road map
The right level of sponsorship—such as present and vocally supportive deputy and assistant deputy minsters—can help efforts to improve experience to succeed. Organizations can agree on the “why” behind getting started, including the outcomes they’re seeking (such as improved experience and increased trust in government) and how they will be measured. In building a business case and road map, organizations can identify citizen journeys that have the highest value to Canadians and greatest feasibility, prioritizing quick wins and pulling value forward to generate impact and build momentum.
To begin building a road map, it is essential to start by identifying the most critical service journeys and their key steps. Our survey results indicate that for many Canadians, finding a family doctor is the most important journey influencing their overall satisfaction with provincial services. This journey holds the highest importance in Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec, three of the four largest provinces. Across Canada, speed, transparency, and reliability are the most important drivers of satisfaction for finding a family doctor. Within this journey, the weight of different steps varies across provinces. In two of the three large provinces mentioned, waiting for a response is the most important step for overall satisfaction, while in the third, learning how to find a family doctor holds the top spot.
These insights highlight the importance of developing a deep understanding of what matters most before beginning work. By focusing on critical aspects of journeys and steps within journeys that matter most, governments can target their efforts to most efficiently improve overall satisfaction.
Build the organization’s talent bench
Organizations will want to consider balancing the right mix of internal and external talents to deliver against their road map, being strategic about which skills and competencies should remain in-house. They can emphasize the value proposition of working in government (such as the mission orientation) and build talent from within where possible.
One federal department built a dedicated “digital talent incubator” to design innovative pathways to access technical talent, such as through agreements with university programs. They were thoughtful about methods for efficiently onboarding those roles while simultaneously upskilling existing staff in new ways of working, including agile approaches.
Adopt a new operating model that can scale
Organizations can identify the right journeys, aligning agile teams from across the organization to those efforts and collaborating across shared platforms for consistency and efficiency. They can spend real time on generative citizen research to understand the lived experience and unique pain points of individuals who have experienced each journey—and then involve those Canadians at every stage of creating solutions. Organizations can consider defining their risk tolerance and what mitigations are needed; testing small increments in-market is often the fastest way to derisk, get feedback, and learn.
While developing its first dedicated journey lab, one federal department established a new process by which to convene user panels for ongoing testing of products and tools and continued research related to newly transformed journeys.
Embed data everywhere
Using a federated model, building data products, and implementing a standard data taxonomy can support organizations in meeting increasing expectations to share information across entities and simplify experience. Doing so will improve data interoperability, enabling departments, ministries, and different levels of government to collaborate for “tell me once” data collection and other use cases to streamline services and improve experience and outcomes for Canadians. Delivering on this may require new mindsets and approaches (including, in some cases, potential policy changes) for data sharing between public entities. For example, a peer G20 jurisdiction developed a tool for tracing personal protective equipment, leveraging health system data from across agencies to improve procurement and routing of staff and patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. Organizations can consider embedding diagnostic and performance measurement data into decision-making during the creation of solutions and also during implementation and scaling to spot potential improvements early and continuously improve the development process.
Unlock adoption and scaling across government
Focusing early on change management and adoption can support the human and cultural side of change; organizations will require changing mindsets and ways of working across levels, from leadership to the front lines directly interacting with service recipients. To do this at scale, organizations can consider partnering early on with adjacent entities in places where it is possible to streamline change management. Organizations can also prioritize adoption of new processes by frontline staff—communicating that change is coming, identifying change agents to lead the charge, and training them on new processes. Sharing successes can help generate public trust and build internal enthusiasm.
There is much at stake for governments across Canada in the mission to improve experience with government services. Improving these experiences can allow governments to “do more with less,” increasing ROI in the context of perpetually constrained resources while also setting governments up to deliver on diverse Canadians’ needs and their ever-rising expectations as they relate to speed, personalization, and convenience.
In our view, improving experience is well within the potential of governments across Canada. And while improving experience isn’t easy, it is needed. It will require strong leadership, a clear vision and priorities, curiosity and humility, and the grit to keep pushing when others might give up—which is exactly why we believe Canadians are uniquely up to the task.
