What are the drivers of trust in government? What specifically do we expect of public sector officials? And how can we go about improving overall trust?

As I reflect on my own musings, blogs and other public utterances on these questions, along with what I’ve read and heard from more savvy observers – including beat reporters – I can’t help but recalling one of George Carlin’s most hilariously analytic stand-up routines. It’s his rant on how virtually all of the Old Testament’s 10 commandments really boil down to one simple rule: Don’t take what’s not yours!

Ethical Behavior

Certainly, given the decades- or centuries-long, recurring wave of greed-driven sleaziness in both our public and private sectors – from Wall Street to the US Congress, governors’ offices, city halls, and county commissions – one gets the sense that the ethical foundations laid in place stone-by-stone by the nation’s founding fathers are as badly in need of repair as our country’s aging infrastructure. And as I’ve written about on my agile bureaucracy blog, just about on any day anywhere in the country you can pick up the morning newspaper and read articles and opinion pieces on government corruption – in the front and local sections, on the sports pages and in the comics. And while the brand and scale of corruption we experience in so-called “mature” democracies may pale by comparison to that in the emerging variety (e.g., in sub-Saharan Africa, the former Yugoslavia, the former Soviet Union, etc.), it nevertheless weakens the trust we place in public officials.

From my perch in South Florida, I’ve followed reporting on public sector corruption in Palm Beach County over the past four years. Here in “Corruption County” as The Palm Beach Post has dubbed it the people have come to suspect that many public servants (i.e., elected, appointed, and career civil service employees) get into this line of work for personal gain. That is, their principal motivation for making a decision or taking an action is: How will this benefit me, my family, my friends and/or associates – materially or otherwise, either directly or (through laundering) indirectly? Clearly, while such corruption can be found from coast to coast, this is not the behavior most Americans expect of their public officials, nor is it the vision of the United States we wish to project to our children and the rest of the world.

Transparency

In the spring 2009 issue of The Public Manager, we published a forum of five articles on transparency, performance measurement and the public trust (Volume 38: Number 1). Adapted from presentations at a 2007 symposium, this forum offered perspectives on how promoting greater transparency in government can help restore American’s trust in the public sector. Topics included: 1) how to bring transparency to the public budgeting process; 2) using the Internet to create transparency in state budgets; 3) how measuring government performance can promote transparency; 4) a strategy for “targeted transparency;” and 5) how to ensure that local governments include the public in their priority setting – transparency, governance and civic engagement.

Among the perspectives explored by forum authors, interestingly, there was an upside and a downside to this trust-sensitive matter. On the benefit side of the ledger, most argued that transparency is vital for maintaining democracy and good government. Of course, to be beneficial it must provide information that is relevant to the lives of citizens and at the same time meet requirements of the financial community, politicians, general citizens, and the press. Also, greater transparency on budgets can make government more accountable to taxpayers, and indeed several states already have used the Internet to make searchable detailed budgets available to the public.

But there are downside risks as well. First, sometimes too much transparency can create management and policy-making problems for government officials. One example cited was a state-level controversy over whether economic development incentives should be fully disclosed, unintentionally pitting one group of citizens against another. Also, transparency policies, especially in the age of the Internet, often produce information overload that repels citizens trying to learn more about public policies.

Performance Accountability

Last year, The Palm Beach Post noted that federal grant-in-aid funding was finally flowing to reduce hurricane-related damage in local communities. However, “…the excessive delays are easily explained by the involvement of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has a history of making hard work harder.” (Thus in this part of the state), “…only a few projects have been completed out of the 74 grant applications generated by the ’04 storms. Some local managers withdrew their applications in frustration, rather than fight with FEMA to get plans approved.” Meanwhile, “…FEMA has wasted time fighting over details on application forms and blueprints.

Several weeks later, The Post published an article lauding R. David Paulson, former Miami-Dade fire chief and then current FEMA Administrator who took over the reins after the agency’s botched response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Paulson “…recruited other state and local emergency responders” (and) “…took something that the…public had no confidence in” and brought it back to life. In this coverage, which is representative of similar pieces on public sector organizations you can find in any local newspaper any day of the week (look for them and I suspect you’ll agree), lie the seeds for understanding what we mean by the culture of bureaucracy. In the case of FEMA’s response to the perfect storm, a few elements that stand out include matters of: agility, hiring and staffing practices, and a rule-driven vs. customer- or citizen-centered process – all of these matters of performance accountability.

Engagement

And just recently, Tom Friedman had an op-ed piece in The New York Times on an example of government that achieves legitimacy by “…delivering transparent, accountable administration and services” in Palestine! Freidman has taken a shine to Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister who was an economist with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and is famous in the region for “his incorruptibility.” If the flat Earth man’s prognostications are accurate, Mr. Fayyad will generate trust by engaging his citizenry, “… (telling) people who (he is), what (he’s) about and what (he) intends to do and then actually do it.”

In similar fashion, The Public Manager/ASPA 2009 practitioner conference – Strengthening Trust in Government – explores solutions that rely heavily on engaging a variety of communities of interest. Throughout the 2-day event, emphasis is placed on opening dialogues and building collaborations: 1) within and across government bureaucracies, 2) with the American public, and 3) with other stakeholders (e.g., legislative bodies, the private and nonprofit sectors, the media, etc.) as well. In fact, this conference engages prospective participants and others interested in the topic months before the event gets underway in Washington DC on November 2, 2009. Kicking off a wide range of polls, blogs, wikis, podcasts and other social networking exchanges in early August, we hope to draw interest and fresh perspective and get a leg up on building an agenda for going forward after the conference.

For starters, I would like to get some thoughts on the following short list of questions:

1. What are the drivers of trust in government – at the federal, state and local levels? Have I missed one or more obvious sources of discontent?
2. What trend data are there – say over the past 40-50 years or so – that give us a clue (a baseline) on where we stand right now?
3. Internal audit agencies, offices of inspectors general and the US Governmental Accountability Office (GAO) aside, what systems does government rely on most to ensure a high level of ethical behavior among its workforce – including elected and appointed officials, career employees and contractor staff increasingly embedded in multi-sector teams?
4. What public trust-sensitive skill sets are built into the repertoire of executive and managerial training and development programs? And what are exemplary, best practice illustrations at different levels of government – both here in the States and abroad?
5. What best practices in the areas of transparency, performance accountability and engagement (or communication) can be models for improved trust within and among agencies, with the public, and with other stakeholder communities?

Chime in here or visit other blogs and forums on the 2009 conference site and let us hear from you.