Trust in Government is at an all-time low. In the U.K., we recently
saw several Government Ministers resign, led by the resignations of Rishi Sunak,
Chancellor of the Exchequer and Sajid Javid, the Health Minister. Former
Minister Javid stated:
“I am instinctively a team player but the British people also rightly
expect integrity from their Government”.
Across the globe, trust has fallen both in Government and in companies.
A recent Forbes article reported on a PwC survey that found:
“…there is a glaring gap between the trust consumers have in companies
(30%), and the trust business leaders think consumers have in their
organizations (87%)”.
In the private sector, the decline in trust leads to immediate negative consequences, e.g. the PwC survey found that 71% of customers who do not trust a company won’t buy from
them. In the Public Sector, the impact is thought to be less dramatic as
citizens have no choice but to use Government services.
Government can no longer ignore trust levels
Government can no longer ignore these low levels of trust; firstly, because
Government should lead the way in good governance. Government is the primary
regulator, especially for Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG). In 2019
government agencies were responsible for over 90% of new regulations
.
If Governments are to have credibility as a regulator, they must ‘walk the talk’.
Otherwise, citizens, communities and even companies will challenge them or choose
not to comply.
“Governments must walk the talk.”
Secondly, because of digitalisation, the Public now has alternatives
concerning some Government services. For example, countries such as the British
Virgin Islands, Cayman and Turks and Caicos Islands rely heavily on the
Financial Services Sector and Tourism as their primary revenue earners.
However, companies can choose to incorporate their business elsewhere if
Government does not improve in critical areas such as Company Registration and
Tax Administration. For Entrepreneurs across the globe who can shift
their business online, E-Residency from Estonia enables entrepreneurs to register
and manage their business from Estonia, reducing their local tax liability and
impacting Government revenue in their home country.
Other examples are the changing costs in private healthcare; online options
and a competitive insurance market are making it more affordable; this could
lead to people opting out of Government-funded healthcare systems. The
result may be lobbying to make National healthcare schemes discretionary rather
than mandatory to reduce individual tax liability.
Governments can do something!
So, what action can Governments take? They can start by understanding
what drives trust in Government. The OECD
[3] has been working in this area and
identified five drivers of trust in government institutions:
- Responsiveness
- Reliability
- Openness
- Integrity
and
- Fairness.
Governments can be intentional in focusing on these drivers by developing
Customer Service Experience Programmes that put citizens at the heart of public
services. Ensuring the design of systems and processes incorporates these trust
drivers goes beyond E-Government service delivery to Digital Transformation,
i.e. using digital technologies to improve performance, thereby increasing responsiveness
and reliability, and capturing data and providing appropriate access to all
stakeholders contributes to increased openess, integrity and fairness.
If you want to know more on this subject take a look at our
white papers. If
we can help your organisation, get in touch at
info@governance-consortium.com
