Here are some of the best questions for a civil servant survey about digital government service usability, plus smart tips for crafting them. If you want to build such a survey in seconds, you can generate it with Specific.
Open-ended questions for deeper civil servant insights
Open-ended questions let civil servants freely express what works, what doesn’t, and why it matters. This kind of qualitative feedback is key for uncovering usability pain points, as it’s not boxed in by predefined choices. It works best when you want to know the “why” or “how,” or to surface surprising insights you’d never have thought to ask about.
Describe a recent experience you had using a digital government service. What stood out?
Which features make your work with digital government platforms easier or harder, and why?
Can you recall a frustrating moment when using a digital service at work? What happened?
What additional tools or features would help you do your tasks more efficiently?
How well do current digital services help you access the information you need?
In what ways do digital government services support or hinder your daily responsibilities?
What suggestions do you have for making digital services more user-friendly?
Are there tasks you still need to complete offline? If so, why?
How would you describe the process of getting support or help while using digital platforms?
If you could change one thing about any government digital tool, what would it be and why?
Why open-ended? Research shows that over 60% of respondents still experience problems accessing digital government services, even if 78% say they’re getting better [6]. We need to dig deeper to understand those hidden roadblocks.
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for government digital usability surveys
Single-select multiple-choice questions are perfect when you want to quantify experiences or open up a conversation. They’re quick for civil servants to answer—especially helpful when you want broad participation or want to spot patterns fast. Sometimes, it’s easier for respondents to pick from a few options than to craft a detailed response from scratch. This can be your gateway to a follow-up for richer detail.
Question: How satisfied are you with your main government digital service?
Very satisfied
Somewhat satisfied
Neutral
Somewhat dissatisfied
Very dissatisfied
Question: What is your biggest challenge when using digital government services?
Finding specific information
Service availability
Slow performance
Getting support/help
Other
Question: Which device do you most often use to access government digital platforms?
Desktop/laptop computer
Mobile phone
Tablet
Other
When to follow up with “why?” If a civil servant selects “Dissatisfied” or names a challenge like “Finding specific information,” this is a great moment to ask “Why?”—it quickly gets to the root cause, making follow-ups both time-efficient and highly valuable.
When and why to add the “Other” choice? Add “Other” in cases where your predefined options might not capture unique challenges or innovative use cases. Follow-up questions to “Other” responses often reveal unexpected insights that can drive meaningful change.
Should you use NPS for digital government services?
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a simple, industry-standard metric for assessing likelihood to recommend. For civil servant surveys, NPS works well because it efficiently measures broad satisfaction—especially relevant when you’re benchmarking improvement over time or comparing teams, departments, or localities. Despite its origins in customer research, it reliably tracks engagement and pain points in internal civil service contexts too.
If you’re looking to quickly deploy an NPS survey for civil servants about digital government usability, try Specific’s NPS survey template.
The power of follow-up questions
Open-ended and multiple-choice questions are great, but what unlocks truly actionable insight is smart follow-up. Automated follow-ups go beyond forms: they clarify, probe, and adapt in real-time as a skilled interviewer would. You can read more about this in our deep dive into automated follow-up questions.
Specific uses AI to tailor follow-ups instantly, based on each civil servant’s reply and your research context. This dynamic probing fills in the blanks, yielding more complete data, reducing back-and-forth emails and getting decision-ready insights much faster. The result? Conversations feel natural, and even busy civil servants are more likely to respond in depth.
Civil Servant: “Sometimes the website is slow.”
AI follow-up: “Can you describe when you experience slowdowns? Is it during specific tasks or times of day?”
How many follow-ups to ask? Usually, 2-3 follow-ups are enough for any given answer. It’s smart to allow respondents to skip ahead if they’ve given all the detail you need. Specific has a customizable setting for this, so you never lose control of the flow.
This makes it a conversational survey: Instead of feeling like a form, it’s actually a dynamic conversation, improving response rates and honesty.
AI analysis, rich text, no problem: Even with lots of unstructured text, analysis is easy—Specific’s AI-powered survey response analysis sifts through hundreds of comments, surfacing the patterns in minutes. Learn more in our how-to guide on analyzing feedback from digital government surveys.
These next-generation, automated follow-up questions are unique—see for yourself by generating a survey and experiencing the difference.
How to prompt GPT to create great civil servant digital service questions
If you want to generate survey questions with ChatGPT or another AI, start with a simple, direct prompt:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for Civil Servant survey about Digital Government Service Usability.
But if you give AI more context—like who you are, your goal, the surveys you’ve run before—the output is dramatically better. Example:
I am designing a survey for civil servants responsible for delivering digital government services. Our goal is to improve usability and discover hidden pain points around access, efficiency, and support. List 10 open-ended questions to uncover actionable insights.
Once you have your draft questions, guide the AI to organize them:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Then, drill deeper into your preferred areas with a targeted prompt (example for the “Support” category):
Generate 10 questions for the category “Access to Support and Help.”
What makes a “conversational survey” different?
A conversational survey is not a static form. Instead, it’s more like a guided interview—each answer leads to a new, tailored question, just as a good researcher would ask in person. The respondent feels heard, the survey captures rich details, and you get the full context behind every answer.
This is where AI survey generation is a game-changer over the traditional method of writing and editing questions one by one in a form builder. Instead of manually tweaking options and logic trees, you can chat naturally with the Specific AI survey generator or use the AI survey editor—it’s faster and easier, unlocking better survey results.
Manual Surveys | AI-Generated Surveys |
|---|---|
Build question by question | Generate entire survey with a natural prompt |
Static, impersonal forms | Conversational, chat-like experience |
Manual follow-up (via email or in-person) | Dynamic, contextual probing with AI |
Manual aggregation and summarization | Instant AI summaries and keyword extraction |
Why use AI for civil servant surveys? The landscape of digital government usability is always changing—often faster than traditional survey cycles can keep up. AI survey examples, especially those made with Specific, are adaptive: you can test, iterate, and launch targeted conversational surveys in minutes, not weeks, making civil servant feedback smarter and more actionable.
Specific isn’t just an AI survey builder—it’s tuned for best-in-class conversational survey experiences. This keeps feedback loops fast and smooth for everyone involved. If you want step-by-step help, check out our how-to guide for creating surveys for civil servants and digital government usability.
See this Digital Government Service Usability survey example now
Create real-time, conversational surveys that are tailored to civil servant needs—get actionable insights and unlock deeper feedback with ease. Don’t miss your chance to transform how your team learns from digital government service users.