Andres Raieste, Senior Vice President and Global Head of the Public Sector Industry at Nortal, asks who would you trust more: the tax authority or the rescue service?
When asked to rank public institutions by trust, most people will instinctively choose the rescue service. After all, one saves your life; the other takes your money. And yet, in Estonia, the tax authority sits right at the top of the trust index, second only to the emergency services.
This is no accident. It is the product of deliberate design choices in digital government. Trust is not a cultural inheritance or a matter of national character. Estonia in the 1990s was not a high-trust society; its citizens were just as sceptical of government as those in the UK today. However, within a decade, trust in government services transformed. The lesson is clear: trust can be built.
Trust as the foundation of effective government
Trust is more than a “nice to have.” It is the multiplier of policy effectiveness. Services that work reliably, transparently and fairly inspire citizens to comply willingly, reducing the need for enforcement and lowering administrative costs.
In Estonia, the tax authority doesn’t need to chase compliance because the service works so well; citizens comply voluntarily. Policy effectiveness feeds trust, and trust in turn makes policy more effective. It is a self- reinforcing cycle.
For the UK public sector, the challenge is not just modernising technology but creating this cycle of trust. Citizens will forgive clunky interfaces; they will not forgive services that feel unfair, opaque or broken.
The psychology of distrust
To understand how to build trust, we need to acknowledge the human biases that erode it:
- Negativity bias: A single failure (such as a delayed payment or a lost form) outweighs ten smooth transactions.
- Fairness bias: If citizens see politicians or the wealthy avoiding rules, they presume the system is unfair.
- Transparency bias: What can’t be seen or explained is distrusted.
- Complexity bias: The more complicated the process, the less people believe it is working in their favour.
These biases are universal. They explain why citizens demand convenience but expect disappointment. This trust gap is the real challenge of digital government.
The trust formula
Estonia’s experience points to a practical formula for building trust:
Reliability + Fairness + Transparency, executed with constant small improvements.
- Reliability: Citizens care about outcomes, not websites. Trust grows when a service works the first time, your benefit lands in your account, your licence arrives in the post. Estonia’s rule of thumb: every service must be accessible in three thumb taps.
- Fairness: Automate where human bias creeps in. Algorithms, when transparent and accountable, reduce discrimination. In the UK, that could mean auditing decisions in DWP or tax enforcement at HMRC.
- Transparency: Citizens must be able to see how government uses their data. In Estonia, every data access by an official is visible to the citizen in real time.
- Execution: Small, visible improvements build trust more effectively than rare, sweeping reforms.
Remove any one element – reliability, fairness, transparency – and the trust dividend collapses.
Why this matters for the UK
The UK faces its own trust paradox. Despite heavy investment in digital transformation, citizens still report frustration, confusion and suspicion. Nortal’s research shows that:
- One-third of citizens do not trust government to deliver fully digital services.
- 30–31% are more willing to share personal data with private companies than with government.
- Privacy and security are top concerns for nearly half of respondents.
Lessons from Estonia
The Estonian model is not about radical transformation or billion-pound projects. It is about consistent, incremental improvements, guided by clear principles:
- The once-only principle: government asks for information once, then shares it internally. Citizens do not carry the burden of bureaucracy.
- Data clarity: ownership of data is explicit. Agencies know who controls what, under what rules.
- Equal status of digital actions: a digital signature has the same legal weight as a handwritten one.
None of this requires a cultural revolution. It requires discipline: simplifying regulations, clarifying data rights and proving legitimacy through transparency.
The road ahead
For UK institutions under pressure, whether it is HM Revenue & Customs chasing compliance, Department for Work and Pensions supporting vulnerable citizens or Government Digital Service setting digital standards, the message is the same: trust is the dividend of personal government.
It is earned not by glossy apps, but by outcomes delivered reliably, fairly and transparently. Citizens don’t want to navigate government; they want solutions to life events. They want services that anticipate needs, respond quickly, and show clearly how their data is used.
Estonia demonstrates that even in a low-trust society, transformation is possible. Within a decade, it built one of the most trusted digital governance systems in the world. The UK can do the same.
