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2024

Case Study: New South Wales’ Service

By April 1, 2025April 2nd, 2025No Comments

This article is part of a comprehensive report published by the International Foundation for Customer Experience in Government, which aims to enhance the global dialogue on Customer Experience (CX) in the public sector. Drawing on innovative practices from around the world, the report establishes benchmarks for governments to improve their CX initiatives.

CASE STUDY: NEW SOUTH WALES’ SERVICE NSW

INTRODUCTION 

The organization of responsibilities within the government can often create silos of service. Accessing government services often involves navigating multiple agencies, each with its own processes, paperwork, and points of contact. This fragmented approach leads usually to inefficiencies, longer waiting times, and increased frustration for residents and businesses. Citizens, on the other hand, sometimes prefer a ‘single window’ approach with omnichannel access, where all their requests and needs can be efficiently addressed.

DESCRIPTION OF THE INITIATIVE

In response to the challenges posed by the existence of silos, the New South Wales government made a bold decision to transition to a shared service delivery model and established Service NSW as the designated central agency for this purpose.

Service NSW is an innovative initiative aimed at improving the citizen experience when interacting with the government. Initially, Service NSW was responsible for providing a horizontal information service on behalf of all government agencies. Based on user demand, as it progressed, it started providing transactional services both digitally and physically in an integrated front-end way.

There are currently more than 600 transactional services available through the Service NSW channels (website, mobile application, call center, and service centers). The omnichannel approach is the result of the realization that while digital solutions can be efficient, the government can win the hearts of citizens through direct contact channels.

Additionally, Service NSW launched a Grants and Funding Finder that enables citizens to search for various funding opportunities and provides direct access to the source. The growth of informational and transactional service offerings by Service NSW is supported by their OneCX program 39 . The program features a dedication to change, and capability teams that help agencies with the organizational and technical changes that come together with migrating to the nsw.gov.au portal or other joint channels.

SUCCESS FACTORS

Several key success factors contributed to the effectiveness of the program:

  • Gradual Growth: Service NSW adopted a gradual approach, learning from experience, to transform citizens’ government interactions significantly. They prioritized learning-by-doing over a sudden change, starting with informational service levels and gradually expanding to complex unitary offerings like common fronts for transactional services.
  • Collaboration and Steering: Achieving a seamless and cohesive governmental front requires effective collaboration and strategic direction. Service NSW successfully redesigned traditional responsibilities to deliver services through unified channels while fostering partnerships with various agencies. This approach has significantly enhanced the customer experience.
  • Strategic Decisions and Strong Leadership: Delivering exceptional customer experiences for citizens starts with strategic decisions implemented by strong leadership. As time passes, these principles become embedded in the DNA and culture of organizations, driving a lasting commitment to continuous improvement.

MAIN CHALLENGES:

While the program achieved significant success, it also encountered some challenges:

  • The Current Operating Model May Need to Be Revisited to Support Funding Complex Services: The current operating model of Service NSW prioritizes standardized transactional services, with costs uniformly covered per transaction. However, funding complex services proves challenging due to varying costs based on cases and processes, often spanning multiple agency lines. As a result, a more appropriate and flexible funding model is necessary to advance Service NSW offerings toward more complex and unitary service delivery.
  • Difficulty in Efficiently Gathering and Analyzing Customer Feedback: Customer feedback, encompassing journey observations and survey responses, holds immense value for service improvements. However, swiftly gaining a comprehensive understanding of customers from these inputs, which can be addressed by automating the feedback collection process, is challenging.
  • Limited Personalization: The lack of a national digital ID hinders the full personalization of digital services and the implementation of secure digital service delivery, despite the increasing digitalization of government interactions and citizens’ data.

TAKEAWAYS 

The program offers valuable takeaways for successful government initiatives:

  • Unitary Service Delivery Channels: To elevate CX and meet people’s true expectations, consider establishing unitary service delivery channels. This may require a dedicated team or mandating a specific agency, even potentially creating a new agency.
  • User-Friendly Whole-Of-Government Information Service: As a first step towards unitary service delivery, begin with a well-structured and user-friendly whole-of-government information service.
  • Omnichannel Approach: Offer your services through multiple channels (e.g., web, app, call, physical, mobile office) to accommodate customers’ preferences and needs. However, managing the omnichannel approach effectively is essential.
  • Dedicated Support: Even with unitary frontline channels, provide dedicated support to agencies during their transformation process to overcome resistance to change and develop new capacities.
  • Reconfigure Funding Models: Redesign service delivery funding models to support unitary offerings of more complex services, not solely standardized ones.

In conclusion, Service NSW has achieved remarkable success in transforming the Government Customer Experience in New South Wales. According to the 2021-2022 annual report 40 published by Service NSW, since its inception, it has facilitated over 51 million transactions supporting 2,500+ services. Additionally, it has set-up 200+ physical one-stop shops, saved customers 4.5 billion dollars, and achieved a 97% customer satisfaction rate 41 . To sustain this success, Service NSW must remain agile, adaptive to technological advancements, and data-driven to meet changing citizen expectations and deliver seamless and citizen centric services in the future.

In our next article, explore how Portugal’s digital-by-default strategy ensures accessibility for all by complementing online services with Citizen Spots, bridging the gap between digital innovation and inclusive public service.

References:
39 OneCX program, September 28, 2023. https://www.nsw.gov.au/nsw-government/onecx-program.

40 “Service NSW Annual Report 2021-22.” Service NSW, 2022. https://www.service.nsw.gov.au/system/files?- file=2022-12/service-nsw-annual-report-2021-22.pdf.

41 Ibid