Innovation Can Digital Experiences Save Democracy? Amy Glynn Brand Contributor ServiceNow BRANDVOICE Storytelling and expertise from marketers | Paid Program Jul 22, 2022, 06:07pm EDT | Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin How the city of Santa Monica restored citizen faith in government. It takes a lot of effort to cultivate and maintain trust, and very little to break it. It’s true in one-on-one relationships, in businesses—and perhaps especially in the public sector. For reasons ranging from the self-evident to the subtle, public trust has plummeted. In 1964, 77% of Americans said they trusted their government to do the right thing all or most of the time. Today, that number is 24%. In our system of government, trust in public institutions is a cornerstone. Without it, we essentially cannot have a functioning democracy. The question is: Can we rebuild that trust ? And if so, how? Trust is the lifeblood of our public institutions. getty Joseph Cevetello, CIO for the City of Santa Monica, took the stage at ServiceNow’s Knowledge 2022 conference to discuss how his municipality has addressed trustworthiness. Here’s what he shared with the audience. The pillars of trust “Trust in government is about three things: empathy, predictability, and reliability,” Cevetello said. He stressed that empathy was the most important factor in creating the “predictability” and “reliability” components. He defined empathy as putting yourself in your customers’ shoes and working hard to understand their causes of friction so you can come up with solutions to reduce it or eliminate it. Predictability and reliability are really about expectations and consistency. “People want to know when the tax man is going to show up,” he said. “They want to be confident that parking meters do in fact track time accurately. ” Add “efficiency,” and you’ve got everything most people don’t think of when they think of government—which suggests the need for significant shifts in how governments think and present themselves to citizens. But, according to Cevetello, effecting that shift of mindset is both possible and simpler than it sounds—especially if you have comprehensive digitization. Understand the friction points When Cevetello started working for the city five years ago, he discovered that Santa Monica, despite its well-earned reputation for sustainability, still depended on paper for nearly everything—even booking a public tennis court required a physical interaction. A newcomer to municipal government, Cevetello described his shock at realizing city officials didn’t view citizens as “ customers . ” For him, this was a key insight into understanding the friction in people’s interactions with the city. Digital service delivery was suddenly mandatory. And they needed it fast—on a tight budget. He knew that to build trust he would have to take the time to understand how citizens experience their city. What do people need or expect? What are their challenges? From there, you develop comprehensive, reliable, and efficient processes to deliver services digitally. When Covid hit and city offices closed to the public, the lack of digital processes caused chaos. Services were interrupted, revenues plummeted, and the city had to lay off workers for the first time in 110 years. Digital service delivery was suddenly mandatory. And they needed it fast—on a tight budget. Because Santa Monica was using ServiceNow’s Now Platform internally, Cevetello looked into extending it to citizen-facing transactions. ServiceNow provided back-end engineering to assist with integration. In just three months, he and his team were able to digitize key processes, and within a year the new system had processed over 40,000 service requests. Implementing digital signatures alone saved 150,000 hours of staff time (and untold reams of paper!) because every contract had previously been walked around town for wet signatures. Tips for regrowing public trust Trustworthy, low-friction government is possible—and there’s no downside. Citizens benefit. Public sector employees benefit. Public coffers benefit. Pushed by the pandemic to innovate quickly, Santa Monica transformed the customer experience for its citizens—beginning with acknowledging that “customer experience” was meaningful in their context. Based on his experience in Santa Monica, here are Cevetello’s suggestions for public sector trust repair: Don’t just display empathy—practice it. Performative “empathy” isn’t empathy, and citizens aren’t fooled by it. Government entities can’t build trust without taking the time to understand what constituents are experiencing and what needs to change. Secure, human-centered digitization is key. It’s burdensome to staff and citizens alike to have to physically stand in line to sign a contract, pay a fee, apply for a land use variance—or, yes, reserve a tennis court. Individuals need the ability to securely accomplish bureaucratic tasks without massive schedule disruption. By the same token, first responders and city departments can provide more effective service if they have secure, appropriate, and accurate data available. Don’t ignore mobile solutions. People use their mobile devices for just about everything. Wise digitization takes this into account. Cevetello points out that “connected” doesn’t equal “smart. ” Make sure you’re integrating the tools you already have. Smart digitization enables governments to turn mountains of siloed data into meaningful action. For example, Santa Monica developed a homelessness data-sharing app (created in partnership with Akido Labs) that has dramatically reduced duplicative responses to citizens in crisis. Now (for example) a single instance of an unresponsive person on a city street doesn’t automatically trigger multiple separate responses from the fire department, the police, paramedic units, and homeless outreach teams. Crafting wise, empathetic, flexible, and integrated systems and practices isn’t necessarily easy—but it can be simpler than most governments think. Can digital workflows single-handedly save democracy? Not likely. But integrated, smart technologies and comprehensive data management—along with sincere human attentiveness to what the people need from their public leaders—can go a long way toward restoring faith in public institutions. Self-serving bureaucracies don’t help anyone accomplish goals, and they certainly don’t foster a belief that our governments exist to serve and protect us. Crafting wise, empathetic, flexible, and integrated systems and practices isn’t necessarily easy—but it can be simpler than most governments think. And mastering it, one municipality at a time, might just help stabilize relations between citizens and governments. Amy Glynn Editorial Standards Print Reprints & Permissions.