Citizen Satisfaction with U.S. Government Services Hits 19-Year High, Epignosis Insights Finds

Federal Satisfaction Climbs for a Fourth Straight Year

Epignosis Insights, a market research and brand intelligence consultancy, today published its latest report, Customer Experience in Government and Public Sector Services, examining how citizens experience federal, state, and local government services amid accelerating investment in digital and AI-enabled channels. The report finds that citizen satisfaction with U.S. federal government services rose 1.0% to 70.4 on a 100-point scale in fiscal year 2025, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) — a 19-year high and the fourth consecutive year of improvement, with results collected through September 2025 before that year's government shutdown.

Yet the report cautions that this progress sits against a persistently wide gap with the private sector. A 2023 Deloitte Center for Government Insights survey of 5,800 individuals across 13 countries found that satisfaction with digital government services still trails private-sector digital services by roughly 21 percentage points on average, and only about a quarter of citizens regularly use digital channels to interact with government at all.

AI-Enabled Transactions Are Driving the Clearest Gains

The report ties much of the recent federal satisfaction improvement to targeted technology upgrades on high-volume transactions. “Analysts attribute much of the recent gain to the early but accelerating adoption of artificial intelligence across agency service channels, from simplified passport renewals to faster benefits processing and AI-powered chatbots handling routine inquiries,” the report states. It highlights the State Department's full digital passport renewal-from-home system, launched in September 2024, which more than 1.5 million citizens used in 2025 and which cut standard processing time from six-to-nine weeks down to four-to-six weeks.

Agency Performance Varies Widely

The report finds enormous variation beneath the government-wide average. Among the 15 departments and independent agencies ACSI separately tracks, the Department of Agriculture posted the highest fiscal year 2025 score at 77, with its Farm Service Agency reaching an exceptional 83 following simplified online loan tools for farmers and ranchers. The Department of State followed at 75. The Department of the Treasury remained the lowest-rated major agency at 63 despite a 3% improvement — a result the report attributes to the structurally difficult nature of tax collection rather than underinvestment. Channel preferences are shifting too: government call center satisfaction improved 5% to 65 in fiscal year 2025, aided by callback systems and AI-powered virtual agents, though website satisfaction remained stronger at a steady 72.

Oversight Gaps Identified by GAO

The report also examines the federal policy architecture behind these results, tracing the government's customer experience push back to a 2021 executive order and the Office of Management and Budget's designation of 37 High Impact Service Providers (HISPs) required to collect standardized customer feedback under OMB Circular A-11. However, it cites a 2025 U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) review finding that OMB's own Cross-Agency Priority goals for customer experience lacked the specific targets and timeframes needed to reliably measure whether HISPs were actually improving. New legislation now requires a fresh set of CAP goals no later than February 2026.

Direct Experience Beats Institutional Trust

Drawing on independent public administration research, the report finds that citizens who directly interact with a specific government agency report considerably more favorable views than their general trust in government would suggest. It cites the National Academy of Public Administration's finding that across 49 government services tracked, a majority of respondents trusted the relevant agency to meet their needs in 27 of those services. The Partnership for Public Service reached a similar conclusion: despite low institutional trust in government broadly, Americans who have actually interacted with federal services have generally reported being satisfied with those specific experiences.

Private Contractors Deliver at Massive Scale

The report also highlights the scale at which private contractors deliver frontline government services. Maximus, Inc., a strategic partner to agencies including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the IRS, and the TSA, reported fiscal year 2025 revenue of $5.43 billion and a record backlog of $15.3 billion. Its investor materials disclose that it operates Medicare contact centers handling more than 36 million calls annually while maintaining a 98% customer satisfaction rate — a scale the report describes as a useful bottom-up validation of the technology-driven improvement narrative seen at the federal level.

Outlook: Uneven Progress Ahead

Looking ahead, the report predicts continued but uneven improvement. “Federal satisfaction is likely to keep climbing modestly as AI-enabled service channels mature and OMB's tighter, more measurable CAP goals take effect,” it states, “but the underlying digital-versus-private-sector gap identified by Deloitte is structural and will not close quickly.” The report expects agencies and contractors focused on high-volume, high-friction transactions — passport renewals, benefits processing, tax filing — to see the most visible satisfaction gains, while inherently adversarial services such as tax collection and enforcement continue to lag.

About Epignosis Insights

Epignosis Insights is a market research and brand intelligence consultancy providing syndicated and custom research across industry verticals including government and public sector services, steel and metals, chemicals, automotive, and financial services. The firm's customer experience and commodity intelligence reports are compiled from diversified public sources — government agencies, industry associations, company disclosures, consulting firms, and trade press — and reconciled into a single, decision-ready view for public-sector leaders, contractors, and policy stakeholders.