My Pispective on Trust

(A pispective is where you write about something in 314 words. Which doesn't include these words or the credit at the bottom)

It's a safe bet that any big/open data article we read will mention trust. Everyone in the technology industry understands that trust is fundamental. But its one thing to talk trust and another to 'do' trust.

Expert conversations focus on the technical elements of making data use 'trustworthy'. The problem here is that the only place trust emerges is in the relationships between people.

We can come up with technical solutions that are reliable, transparent or controlled. But trust is a human issue and comes from the way we treat and view each other.

Unfortunately, we don't seem to have much trust at all. The communications company Edelman has been tracking global issues of trust since 2001. Their latest report isn't very encouraging. But this shouldn't come as much as a surprise if the previous years are anything to go by.

In 2015 the headline was 'Trust is essential for innovation'. In 2016 it was 'Growing inequality of trust'. This year it's 'Trust in crisis'. It's probably no surprise that the government and media are generally distrusted.

It turns out that CEO's aren't seen as being credible. And a majority of people now believe 'the system' is failing. Including the people who tend to do best out of 'the system'

It's no longer enough for leaders to say 'trust me'. Trust will increase when leaders act above and beyond the rules. This is about making an effort to meet human expectations. Trust isn't a compliance exercise.

For public agencies this means looking at how much 'social license' they have. On the business side it means recognising they need to find a whole new way of doing business. Whatever the case, it comes down to leaders emphasising humanity in their work.

This is about putting the economics books away. This is about looking past the numbers. Look past the data to find the people.

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