Government study finds 'significant room to improve' in Canada
Research examined residents' experience with government at both the federal and provincial levels.
McKinsey & Company's "Pulse on the Provinces" study in Canada has revealed that the country's public sector "has work to do" in terms of improving overall customer experience across the 10 provinces.
"Our research shows experience matters for Canadian public services," McKinsey reported. "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."
Polling approximately 5,700 residents, McKinsey's survey spanned 22 common federal and provincial service journeys that are grouped under public benefits; licensing, permitting, and registration; and direct services.
Notably, it was found that the private sector outperforms the public sector on service satisfaction by an average of about 30 percentage points, meaning government satisfaction rates in Canada are lagging behind in comparison to their private-sector counterparts.
"The highest-ranking private-sector service provider we surveyed had a 57% satisfaction rating, whilst Canadian provincial governments had a 39% satisfaction rating and federal government services had an 18% satisfaction rating, on average," McKinsey said.
So, what's driving satisfaction across government services in Canada? According to McKinsey, these satisfaction drivers include clarity, speediness, transparency, reliability, responsiveness, simplicity, and professionalism.
McKinsey noted: "Generally, satisfaction does not vary significantly across drivers, but Canadians are most satisfied with professionalism and speediness.
"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."
It went on to say: "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."
McKinsey pointed to the "significant room" for improvement whilst acknowledging that it's not an easy task.
"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," it stated.
"In fact, our research suggests that up to 80% of public-sector transformation efforts fail to meet their intended objectives."
In response, McKinsey's recommendations include aligning government leaders around a citizen-backed business roadmap; building the organisation's talent bench; adopting a new operating model that can scale; embedding data everywhere; and unlocking adoption and scaling across government.
"In our view, improving experience is well within the potential of governments across Canada," McKinsey declared. "And whilst 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."
