Trust and satisfaction with Australian public services
The Survey of Trust in Australian public services is a regular, national survey. It is the only tool that provides a whole-of-Australian Public Service measure of public satisfaction, trust and experiences with Australian public services across departments and agencies.
Service-specific results have been published since November 2022 to offer insights into people’s experiences with individual services. Publishing these results gives APS agencies a benchmark. This, in turn, helps inform their efforts to improve people’s trust in, and satisfaction with, Australian public services.
Figure 9.23 shows the proportion of respondents who reported feeling they can trust each of the services covered in the survey. The Australian Electoral Commission had the highest level of trust in 2022–23 with 87% of survey respondents indicating that they ‘strongly trust’, ‘trust’ or ‘somewhat trust’ the services provided. Fewer respondents (63%) reported the same level of trust in Centrelink, a service provided through Services Australia.
Figure 9.23: Trust in Australian public services (2022–23)
Source: Trust in Australian public services: 2023 Annual Report
Figure 9.24 shows the proportion of respondents who reported being satisfied with the services they received. The Australian Electoral Commission had the highest proportion of respondents (91%) satisfied with the services they received during 2022–23. The Department of Employment and Workplace Relations had the lowest proportion of respondents satisfied (56%).
Figure 9.24: Satisfaction with Australian public services (2022–23)
Source: Trust in Australian public services: 2023 Annual Report
Note: The Department of Education, Skills and Employment split into the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations and the Department of Education in late 2022. Due to this, data for the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations is from August 2022 to June 2023 and data for the Department of Education is from September 2022 to June 2023.
Trust and satisfaction are highly related and affect each other. Trust involves expectations on how well a service will perform given user needs. Satisfaction is a product of how well the service lived up to those expectations, and drives future expectations.
Trust is strongly associated with an individual’s circumstances. Challenging life events are among the strongest determinants of trust. For example, people experiencing financial hardship are less likely to trust, and less likely to believe that services will meet their needs.
Satisfaction is associated with both the drivers of trust and the experience received from a service. In 2022–23, people were most satisfied with their experiences with staff and least satisfied with public service processes.
See also
Operating context – Australian public services – trust and satisfaction, State of the Service Report 2022–23.
Operating context – Luxembourg Declaration on Building Trust and Reinforcing Democracy, State of the Service Report 2022–23.