In this day and age, building public trust is a significant strategy for both the private and public sectors, for both the national and international levels. Think about the COVID-19 pandemic when governments could not be more pressed to adapt and find solutions, and when some governments enforced measures that infringed upon rights and freedom such as the strict lockdown in China which resulted in the loss of public trust.
How do governments regain public trust? Deloitte Insights propose that the government can do so by working hard with the right intent and with full competence as well as following these 4 trust signals:
1. Humanity – Creating policies based on humanity, being empathetic to the citizens and government officials, including their experiences and well-being.
2. Transparency – Sharing information and open budgets with simple language that the public can understand and give feedbacks
3. Capacity – Working with full capacity so that the programs and services are successful for both citizens and government officials, responding to the agencies and the public’s expectations by training the officials to be able to timely respond to complex problems.
4. Reliability – Delivering what has been promised to the public, keeping up with the standard, addressing challenges quickly, and continuing to assess and enhance the policies
It may be difficult to picture theory into practice but the example is here. The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration under the incumbent governor, Chadchart Sittipunt, whose major policy aims to regain the public trust as has been discussed during the Policy Exchange Innovation 3 event on 20th October 2022.
Humanity-based government can be seen from how the governor’s team analyses the capillary problems and sees the challenges facing a refuse collector “Uncle Tia” who has to walk into a narrow alley to take out the rubbish where the truck is not able to reach. This includes the holistic policy framework that comprehends health, environment, and the people and the officers’ safety.
Allowing people to look at the budgets and procurement through Open Bangkok, installing security cameras for people to keep an eye on the ballot boxes in Bangkok during the 14 May election are both examples of transparency.
The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration also has programs to train the officials such as the program to enhance skills for district director’s assistants so that the officials can better respond to the people’s needs. This is to build public trust in the Bangkok Administration that they are able to work with full capacity.
Receiving complaints via the Traffy Fondue application reflects that the people can trust the Bangkok Administration to solve problems and that the officials are able to consistently respond to the complaints – this all shows that the administration is reliable.
The public trust in government is important to governments around the world, from local to international levels. Trust does not have a shape or form, but when thinking about the 4 trust signals, one can see that trust is not too difficult to build, and we can always create one with intent and consistency.
Source : Deloitte Insights
