The main drivers of public trust vary for different institutions and levels of government. Analysis based on the 2021 OECD Trust Survey finds that levels of trust in the civil service are most influenced by perceptions of government reliability, as well as the responsiveness and fairness of public services (OECD, 2022).
Reliability – the extent to which people are satisfied with administrative services, and are confident the government uses personal data legitimately and is prepared for a contagious disease – has the greatest potential impact on trust in the civil service. According to the OECD Trust Survey, 63.0% of respondents are satisfied with administrative services. A slight increase (one standard deviation) in satisfaction with such services, with all other conditions remaining the same, could lead to an increase in trust in the civil service of 6 percentage points (Figure 2.4). Other factors with a positive and statistically significant influence on trust in the civil service include the perception that both rich and poor are treated fairly when applying for public benefits, the perceived readiness of the civil service to adopt innovation, and feelings of having a say in what the government does. While these results show how important these governance factors are in promoting trust, the starting points vary: different factors have different existing levels of satisfaction. Across countries, only 30.2% of respondents on average feel they have a say in what the government does, while 58.5% believe their application for government benefits would be treated fairly – indicating that, although both would yield similar increases in trust in the civil service, governments have more room to improve in the former (Figure 2.4).
Informing the population about how their personal data are gathered, processed, stored and used is an important aspect of government efforts to improve perceived reliability and thereby increase trust in the civil service (Figure 2.4). On average across countries, 51.1% of people expect the government to use their personal data solely for legitimate purposes. Respondents in Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands and Norway have especially high levels of trust in the government’s use of their data (Figure 2.5).
Agility in adopting new ideas is a key aspect of responsiveness and one of the drivers of trust in the civil service. The OECD Trust Survey finds that just 38% of people on average feel that a public agency would be likely to adopt innovative ideas to improve a public service, although there is variation across countries. People who expect such innovation are much more likely to trust civil servants (70%) than those who don’t (33%). In all the countries surveyed, trust in the civil service is always higher among people who feel there is room for innovation in government, although the size of the trust gap varies widely (Figure 2.6).
