The next frontier of digital transformation: Building trust

October 2, 2015

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From mental-health support in wartime Kyiv to financial assistance for schoolchildren in Mexico City, providing effective digital services is an enduring priority for city leaders. Never about pursuing tech for tech’s sake, the most stand-out of these efforts make critical processes more efficient, more accessible, and—often as a consequence—buoy confidence in government.

But if building trust has sometimes been a byproduct of digital efforts, Richard Pope believes it can move to the core of how cities design and implement them going forward. Pope, who helped launch the UK Government Digital Service and was the first product manager for GOV.UK, is the author of the forthcoming book Platformland: An Anatomy of Next-Generation Public Services. Whether digital efforts of the future are about being proactive on behalf of residents, building APIs that power services provided by community partners, or supporting missions to achieve ambitious city-wide goals, Pope tells Bloomberg Cities they will increasingly be rooted in trust. Here’s how.

Using proactivity to change the feel of government interactions.

Cities around the world have already made great strides in deploying digital to break down barriers to public services. Now, Pope believes, they can position themselves as trusted partners in individual residents’ everyday lives by adding proactivity to the mix. He describes future government interactions as “passive,” by which he means asking less of residents, who will see that cities are going above and beyond on their behalf.

Concretely, this means designing services around peoples’ actual existences—and even their anticipated needs—rather than the internal architecture of government.

Take applying for a local business license. Many cities have long used digital to fast-track this process. But Pope believes they can use the same interaction to, for example, share information with residents about associated federal tax responsibilities and implications. In essence, cities can build trust by giving people more than they ask for without requiring more of them in return.

Generative artificial intelligence provides another potential mechanism for this kind of proactivity. Already, many cities such as Denver, Florence, S.C., and Washington, D.C., have chatbots that can direct people to social services when they say they need help. In the future, cities could be more intuitive in anticipating needs by leveraging these AI-powered services to offer residents personalized “next steps”—and even begin to populate relevant applications for them.

Ultimately, Pope says, cities can aim to fundamentally change the trajectory of their interactions with residents. “If you get the credentials infrastructure right, and if you design your services in the right way, people don't need to come to government,” he says. “Government can come to people.”

Designing digital infrastructure with community partners in mind.

Another critical way cities can build trust in digital services is by engaging residents at the community level, through partnerships with trusted local organizations. This means designing digital systems that not only prioritize efficiency but also foster collaboration with the groups and institutions that residents already know and rely on.

For example, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has successfully built a digital infrastructure that allows veteran-support organizations to directly assist veterans in navigating the benefits system. Cities can adopt a similar approach by developing APIs that enable vetted community partners—such as nonprofits, advocacy groups, and local service providers—to seamlessly access city systems and build services customized for the resident groups they represent. This ensures that services reach those in need through the channels they trust most.

“It’s very much a more networked approach to the delivery of services,” says Pope, highlighting how cities can amplify their reach and effectiveness by building strong, digitally-connected ecosystems that serve their communities more holistically.

The city of Cape Town, South Africa—which has participated in data training with the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative and recently unveiled its new data strategy—is beginning to move in this direction. As Muhammed Ockards, a data engineer for the city, said when describing the local approach last December, “One of the key goals of our team is to engage with the public through data APIs.”

Showing cities will do whatever it takes to deliver on big goals.

If next-generation digital services can build trust on an individual and community level, they can also foster confidence in large-scale citywide efforts. After all, missions are rooted in grand ambitions, creating the opportunity for cities to introduce digital solutions that showcase the full potential of government.

As Pope explains, “A mission gives you permission to think, ‘What would the ideal digital service be?’” He gives the example of a city united around improving child literacy. Leaders could use that mission to identify digital barriers—such as outdated software that hinders communication between parents and teachers—and address them, even if it means exploring new, custom-built digital tools.

The key is demonstrating that local government is willing to pursue truly ambitious goals and won't hesitate to change its digital infrastructure to achieve them.

As Pope notes of the broader potential of next-generation digital, “One way of building trust in government is meeting people in a way that they want to be met.”