How much citizens trust their governments has been starkly highlighted during the current pandemic. How can the US government rebuild declining trust? According to Deloitte, identifying and improving appropriate trust signals could be the key.
As the coronavirus pandemic swept the globe, citizens all over the world looked to their governments to provide economic relief, contain the virus’ spread, and provide a steady flow of information. For the first time in two decades, government was the most trusted institution globally, according to a May 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer report.
An unprecedented global crisis was unfolding, and the “rallying around the flag” effect was clearly visible in the data. Governments that had the most success addressing the pandemic saw this reflected in high trust ratings.
But this sudden surge in trust was not seen everywhere. In the United States, trust in the federal government was at only 20% in August 2020—a slight increase from 2019 (17%), but still near historic lows. This is not a recent phenomenon—public trust in the US federal government has been declining for decades. A majority of citizens also say they are dissatisfied with how the federal government has handled the pandemic. Even trust in state and local governments, which have traditionally enjoyed a higher level of public trust, significantly declined during the pandemic. A recent Deloitte survey of 4,000 Americans found that citizens’ perception of their trust in the US federal government was the lowest in comparison with state and local government and other commercial entities. Not surprisingly, “scientists” emerged as the most trusted group in the survey. In a January 2021 Deloitte and Fortune survey business CEOs said “restoring trust in government” is their top priority for the Biden-Harris administration over the next two years.
Americans’ trust in each other (social trust) has also plummeted. Just over three-fourths of US adults believe Americans have too little or far too little confidence in their fellow citizens.
In short, America is experiencing a crisis of trust. Rebuilding trust in government is imperative for governments to deliver on their various missions such as policymaking, regulating markets, enforcing rules and compliance, and protecting citizens.
Although government interactions with citizens play a big role in building greater public trust, they might not be the only factor driving down public trust. The 2020 trust barometer report states that disillusionment with rising inequality can undermine public trust. Moreover, there is a growing disparity in trust between informed and mass public, in part due to rampant growth in misinformation, disinformation, and fake news. These external factors dent public confidence in government institutional processes, systems, data-collection initiatives, and much more.
Research indicates that trust is not fixed. It can be improved, and the American people are desirous of change: More than 84% of Americans believe political trust can be improved, while 86% believe social trust can be improved.
Rebuilding trust in government depends as much on the perceptions of citizens as the capabilities of government. That is to say that governments must work both to increase perceptions of its trustworthiness as well as the organizational capabilities to actually deliver services, products, and experiences worthy of trust. This study, the first in a series on government trust, will focus on the former challenge: measuring and improving citizens’ trust in government.
While our focus in the study is on the United States, the strategies suggested would also be applicable in other parts of the world. Our research suggests governments can build and sustain citizen trust by focusing on four areas: humanity, transparency, capability, and reliability. Understanding how different types of government agencies interact with their customers—a lens we term retail to regulator—can help them rebuild trust in the midst of the complexity of different government operations and missions.
By Joshua Knight, Bruce Chew, William D. Eggers, RJ Krawiec & Mahesh Kelkar
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