A Research, Learning, and Opportunity Agenda for Rebuilding Trust in Government
American trust in government institutions is at historic lows. You’ve heard that so many times – we get it! Our series on trust in government functions has given you all the context you might ever desire on why that matters. What we haven’t done yet (and what too few do) is talk about what may be needed to rebuild trust in government institutions, broadly, but also specifically.
At a recent workshop hosted by the Federal of American Scientists, we explored the nature of trust in specific government functions, the risk and implications of breaking trust in those systems, and how we’d known we were getting close to specific trust breaking points. The scenarios we developed were not only meant as cautionary tales, but to serve as reference foundations to plan against for any future reform efforts, should trust continue to decline generally or specifically. But we also started to explore the question of what actions may be needed to rebuild trust from a total breakdown – or, absent that, what we need to know to make that rebuilding possible.
What follows is an opportunity agenda for those invested in rebuilding trust in government functions. Instead of admiring the problem with another dozen think pieces on how dire the situation has been for decades, there’s homework we can do now to build our our trust toolkit. This includes:
- Research Opportunities: questions we don’t know the answer to
- Learning Opportunities: Areas where pilots, experiments, explorations or iteration can test what works
- Design Opportunities: Spaces where we already know enough to start building solutions, but need creativity, co-design, champions, and implementation pathways.
This is just the start, reflecting the dozens of suggestions by workshop participants in our too-short session. You undoubtedly have more (let us know!). What we hope it offers is a list of possibilities for policymakers, academics, funders, and practitioners to deepen understanding and test reforms.
Workforce: Trust as a System-Level Challenge
Research Questions
- How does American’s trust vary between career civil servants, short-term experts, and political appointees?
- What is the relationship between negative news coverage about an agency (e.g., performance or layoffs) and different measures of public engagement with that agency (e.g., application rates to that agency?)
- What incentives might make a national service requirement acceptable to Americans?
- What are current views by college age and early career Americans on public service? How has public service motivation changed?
- What are public and key stakeholder views on “merit,” and do expectations of merit drive trust?
- Are there examples of senior leaders who highlight the work of public servants in the United States, and are trust measures in those locations notably different?
- What approaches may better communicate the compliance and oversight barriers civil servants face (both as a means showing anti-corruption/anti-waste and potentially incentivizing support for barrier reduction)?
- How might Americans better understand the “risk management” or “preventative” role that public servants play?
Learning Opportunities
- Pilot programs: test and learn (or document prior learning from) initiatives like civilian mid-career recruitment (e.g., AI leaders in civilian roles, building on military parallels), national and targeted hiring fairs that generate long-term interests.
- Experiment with models of “frictionless” federal applications and one-stop hiring actions.
- Explore early-career exposure to inspiring public servants as a way to seed pride and long-term interest.
- Explore what would be required to restart proven pathways like PMF and broaden service corps models beyond college grads.
- In states with fewer public sector workforce protections, explore what hiring incentives are most in use/most effective
Design Challenges
- Campaigns to highlight federal workers at local/state/national levels, including “famous names” doing stints in public service.
- Meet mission on a specific, high-salience task (ex. Philly I-95) and connect with a “join us” campaign.
- Expand representation of communicators about federal work and workers beyond spokespeople, encouraging all federal workers to take responsibility of public engagement.
- Instill recruitment and overall workforce health as an SES competency.
Procurement: Trust Through Smarter Buying and Clearer Accountability
Research Needs
- What does a sophisticated sourcing strategy look like (market shaping, competition), and what capacities are missing?
- How might AI reshape procurement—and how might it affect perceptions of fairness and accountability?
- Where should procurement risk and responsibility lie to encourage creative but accountable strategies?
- Consider differentiation between “hard”procurement and “bad”procurement and how to productively learn from each.
Learning Opportunities
- Transparently evaluate agile and creative sourcing pilots.
- Develop, refine, and use vendor and bidder experience surveys as part of trust-building.
- Study the impacts of various kinds of procurement transparency on public confidence (e.g.,taking different approaches around contracts, bids, subcontractors, progress, cost overruns, and past performance)
Design Challenges
- Elevate acquisitions professionals as strategic leaders and outcomes builders, not compliance gatekeepers.
- Begin to build in capacity in priority agencies better oversee modern digital contracts.
- Invest in capacity in key areas for strategic insourcing.
Customer Experience: Trust as an Exercise in Proactive Service and Listening
Research Needs
- How does diminished service quality affect public trust, and how hard is it to earn back?
- Can community trust be influenced by CX improvements? How?
- What role does casework play in shaping congressional perspectives on service delivery?
- Where do Americans think priority public services come from?
Learning Opportunities
- Pilot outcome-driven legislation toolkits to help Congress set goals that agencies are trusted to deliver.
- Pilot agency field-office expansion or deployment opportunities to better meet people where they are for service needs and benefit questions
- Expand testing of approaches to embed resources like user experience, equity impact assessments and trauma-informed practices into service design.
- Pilot casework supports (e.g., staff details) and casework connectivity to federal service communities to better connect Congressional casework and federal services.
- Support communities of practice among CX experts.
Design Challenges
- Educate congressional staffs on appointee CX responsibilities to improve oversight.
- Reduce administrative burdens: plain language, translation, integration across agencies.
- Embed use of authentic co-design and public engagement (including with AI tools) to close feedback loops.
- Expand civic education and change management campaigns to reframe government as a source of pride.
- Link CX and public outcomes transparently through KPIs tied to delivery.
Data: Trust in Evidence, Transparency, Reliability, and Capacity
Research Needs
- How might government (and champions of good government) communicate the importance of federal data to the public in ways that build trust and legitimacy?
- Which datasets are of highest public value (beyond economic value), and what is their role? What are upstream and downstream impacts of changes those data sets?
- How do we evaluate and communicate the staffing and technical capacity needed for robust statistical functions (as a point of comparison, like military readiness)?
- How might we forecast or scenario plan around disappearance of data sets, and how might we plan for future potential reintegration of such datasets? With what sort of governance models?
Learning Opportunities
- Test public AI tools with strong user interfaces to make data more accessible and usable – both increasing utility and also public awareness and investment.
- Pilot, learn from, and grow robust public engagement opportunities around public sector data governance.
- Explore public participation pilots in data collection and governance, particularly among underrepresented groups. Assess what works, what generates impact, what captures imagination.
- As external groups take on data collection, governance, and analytic roles previously held by government, explore and test different models for public governance, ownership, oversight and potential transition plans.
Design Challenges
- Develop public-facing data maps (e.g., Sankey charts of data flows and uses) to visualize and communicate government’s role.
- Strengthen public data governance, potentially through new institutions (e.g., equivalent of the National Assessment Governing Board for education).
- Invest in public sector career development pathways where data skills are rewarded.
Cross-Cutting Directions
Research Needs
- Communicating accountability: What are different successful and unsuccessful models of communicating accountability measures and actions in public sector functions?
- Participatory accountability, oversight, and performance measures: What are more participatory or community based efforts to engage citizens in public oversight, accountability and performance measurement?
- Absence of trust: What are the compliance-based costs of absence of trust in government?
Conclusion
The actions surfaced by participants reflect more than tactical fixes—they point to a research and design agenda for the field. Trust is not just the hoped-for outcome of reform, but the principle that should shape how reforms are tested and evaluated. By pursuing these questions, piloting these ideas, and designing around trust, the government capacity community can help rebuild institutions that are not only effective but also respected, legitimate, and deeply connected to the people they serve.
What if low trust was not a given? Or, said another way: what if we had the power to improve trust in government – what would that world look like?
At a period where the federal government is undergoing significant changes in how it hires, buys, collects and organizes data, and delivers, deeper exploration of trust in these facets as worthwhile.