Earning trust in government

Abstract

No issue is more important—or more discouraging—than the steady decline of trust in America’s governing institutions. There are two different streams of trust, however. At the wholesale level, distrust grows from income inequality. The roots of this wholesale distrust are deep; in the short- and medium-term, there is little that government officials can do about it. At the retail level, however, the evidence is that improving the citizen experience can help to earn trust, at least in the particular interactions at hand. This is something that teachers can teach and students can learn: that retail trust can be built; that improvements in the administrator-citizen interaction can earn trust; and that emerging strategies to strengthen citizen satisfaction, especially through information technology, can make a big difference. Government managers can improve their interactions with citizens—and citizens will notice.