Based on an analysis of recent customer reviews across South African government departments and ombudsman offices, the sector faces deep and systemic challenges in citizen experience. While individual officials are occasionally praised for exceptional service, the systems and processes around them consistently fail. Applications disappear, payments go missing, communications go unanswered, and processing times stretch into months and years. The gap between what government services promise and what they deliver is the widest of any sector. The sector does not have a people problem; it has an infrastructure, accountability, and process problem. The officials who earn praise work within and despite the same broken systems that generate the complaints.