Digital Government Index 2025

Adobe has released its Digital Government Index for 2025, which aims to measure efficiency, accessibility, reliability and security of online government services.

The report looked at digital services through the metrics of 'digital equity', 'customer experience', and 'site performance' and found that Australia has edged backwards--with some surprising changes, especially around the impact of AI.

The findings are useful for all web developers, as government services must (and should) be the leaders in equity and digital inclusion. After all, their user base is potentially every citizen.  With over 79% of Federal Government interactions being online, there needs to be continued uplift to ensure government services provide what their citizens need.

UK Leading the way

Of the six countries looked at in the report, the UK scored highest in total and in most areas.

GOV.UK is a great example of centralised information--all Departments are in the same 'hub', the landing page offers clear options for what you need, and there is no doubt when you visit the departmental pages that they all belong to the same authoritative source. There are not a patchwork of different look and feel sites for any governmental information. The layout manages to feel uncluttered, even with the long list of links.

Site Authority and AI

One of the most interesting findings was an 11% decline in site authority--which the report defines as 'findability of sites via search'. In the reports words:

Site authority continues to be impacted by duplication of information across multiple sites, ultimately making it harder for citizens to find what they need.

This has a possible profound impact in an era of AI generated search summaries. When official government sites begin to slip in the SEO list, information used to generate AI summaries can start to be drawn from second-hand sources. This can therefore help scammers and those wishing to push misinformation.

Its out there, but what does it mean?

The other drop in the report was a -23% change in readability score using the Flesch Kincaid reading score, which measures the reading level needed to access the content.

I can see two possible reasons for this--that the increased digitisation of government services is seeing more content online from different services who are still refining their content and the possibility that more words are being put online via AI generation, without consideration for reading levels.

The question then becomes, if it is online, but no one can understand it, what is the point?

It was heartening that NSW's work on easy reads and text translation was cited as an example making content that was accessible for all. Also heartening was the high score for sites on WCAG measures generally.

What's next?

There are a few implications from all of this.

Firstly, AI generated content and search means that centralised, authoritative, and well-functioning sites will be needed to ensure trust in government fro their citizens. myGov was rightly raised many times as an example--you log in, you access connected services, and get what you need done.

Secondly, there is an opportunity to build services that support people to get what they need done efficiently. Image visiting a government site and instead of wading through pages and pages of text, you could just type into an AI chatbot what you are looking for, or respond to a quick series of questions to take you straight to where you need to go, like with the govCMS Rules as Code initiative?

There are lots of opportunities here for government services to build trust and support their citizen's need.

NB: Opinions are my own

All images and references from the report.