Trust is an evidence problem, not a communications problem
Declining trust in digital institutions is routinely treated as a failure of explanation. Often it is an accurate assessment that the institutions have not yet earned it.
When trust in a system falls, the reliable institutional response is a communications programme. The premise is that the system is sound and the public has misunderstood it. Sometimes that is correct. Frequently the public has understood it precisely and responded rationally.
We are not interested in restoring confidence. Confidence that is not warranted is a liability, and manufacturing it is a disservice to the people persuaded. We are interested in making systems worthy of trust and then making that worthiness checkable by someone with no reason to take the operator’s word.
What verifiable trustworthiness requires
- Independent audit rather than self-attestation, by an auditor the operator did not select alone.
- Published performance, including failures, at intervals fixed in advance rather than chosen after the results are known.
- Disclosure of the incentives shaping the design, including what the system is optimised for and who benefits when it succeeds on that measure.
- Consequences for broken commitments that are specified beforehand and have actually been applied at least once.
The uncomfortable implication
This standard would reduce reported trust in the short term, because meeting it means publishing things that are currently not published. An institution that begins reporting its failures looks worse than one that does not, until enough time passes for the difference to become legible.
Trust that survives scrutiny is the only kind worth building. It is also slower to build than the kind that does not.
We think that trade is worth making, and we recognise that recommending it is easier from outside an organisation than inside one.
