An Opportunity Agenda for Rebuilding Trust in Government – Federation of American Scientists

Report on Rebuilding Institutional Trust to Advance Sustainable Development Goals

This report outlines a strategic agenda for rebuilding public trust in government institutions, a foundational requirement for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions). The decline in institutional trust presents a significant barrier to progress across the 2030 Agenda. The following sections detail opportunities for research, learning, and design across key governmental functions, reframing them as pathways to strengthen institutional capacity and advance sustainable development.

Workforce: Building Human Capacity for SDG 16 and SDG 8

A trusted, competent, and motivated public sector workforce is essential for creating the effective and accountable institutions envisioned in SDG 16 and promoting the decent work outlined in SDG 8. This requires a deeper understanding of public service motivation and strategic investment in human capital.

Research Opportunities

• Analyze how public trust varies across different categories of public servants (career, expert, political) to better understand its impact on institutional legitimacy (SDG 16.6).
• Investigate the relationship between agency performance reporting and public engagement, including application rates, to inform strategies for attracting talent (SDG 8.5).
• Assess public and stakeholder perceptions of “merit” in public service and its role in driving trust in institutions.
• Identify effective communication strategies for conveying the risk management and preventative roles of public servants, enhancing public understanding of their value.
• Examine how to communicate compliance and oversight barriers to demonstrate anti-corruption efforts (SDG 16.5) while building support for reducing administrative burdens.

Learning Opportunities

• Pilot and evaluate mid-career recruitment programs to bring diverse expertise into public service, supporting innovation and institutional effectiveness (SDG 16.6).
• Experiment with streamlined federal application and hiring models to reduce barriers to public sector employment (SDG 8.6).
• Explore programs that provide early-career exposure to public service to foster long-term interest and a culture of civic engagement.
• Assess hiring incentives in various jurisdictions to identify effective strategies for attracting and retaining a skilled public workforce.

Design Opportunities

• Develop campaigns that highlight the contributions of public servants to connect their work with tangible community benefits and progress on the SDGs.
• Integrate workforce health and recruitment success as a key competency for senior executive service, ensuring leadership accountability for building institutional capacity.
• Empower all federal workers to engage with the public, expanding communication beyond official spokespeople to build broader trust and understanding.

Procurement: Ensuring Accountability and Sustainability through Strategic Sourcing (SDG 16, SDG 9, SDG 12)

Government procurement is a powerful tool for promoting accountability (SDG 16.5), fostering innovation (SDG 9), and encouraging sustainable consumption and production patterns (SDG 12). Rebuilding trust in this area requires greater transparency, strategic leadership, and clear accountability.

Research Needs

• Define the capacities needed for sophisticated, market-shaping sourcing strategies that align with sustainable development outcomes.
• Assess how AI can reshape procurement to enhance fairness, transparency, and accountability, directly supporting SDG 16.6.
• Determine the optimal distribution of risk and responsibility in procurement to encourage innovation while maintaining accountability.

Learning Opportunities

• Conduct transparent evaluations of agile and creative sourcing pilots to identify best practices for achieving public value.
• Develop and utilize vendor and bidder experience surveys as a mechanism for building trust and improving procurement processes.
• Study the impact of different levels of procurement transparency on public confidence to inform disclosure policies that support SDG 16.10.

Design Challenges

• Reframe acquisitions professionals as strategic leaders focused on outcomes, rather than solely as compliance gatekeepers.
• Invest in agency capacity to oversee modern digital contracts, ensuring accountability in an evolving technological landscape.
• Build capacity for strategic insourcing in key areas to enhance governmental control and effectiveness.

Customer Experience: Fostering Inclusive and Responsive Services (SDG 10, SDG 16)

Delivering proactive, equitable, and user-centric public services is fundamental to reducing inequalities (SDG 10) and building trust in responsive, inclusive institutions (SDG 16.6, SDG 16.7). Improving customer experience (CX) is a direct exercise in making government work for all people.

Research Needs

• Quantify the impact of diminished service quality on public trust and identify the requirements for rebuilding that trust.
• Examine how targeted CX improvements can build community-level trust and contribute to more inclusive institutions (SDG 10.2).
• Analyze the role of congressional casework in shaping perspectives on federal service delivery and identifying systemic issues.

Learning Opportunities

• Pilot outcome-driven legislative toolkits to help lawmakers set clear goals that empower agencies to deliver effectively and build trust.
• Expand testing of service design approaches that embed user experience, equity impact assessments, and trauma-informed practices.
• Support communities of practice among CX experts to accelerate learning and disseminate best practices across government.

Design Challenges

• Reduce administrative burdens through plain language, translation services, and seamless integration across agencies to ensure equitable access (SDG 10.3).
• Embed authentic co-design and public engagement in service development to ensure services are responsive to user needs (SDG 16.7).
• Transparently link CX metrics to public outcomes through Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) tied to delivery on the SDGs.

Data: Enhancing Transparency and Evidence-Based Policy for Sustainable Development (SDG 16, SDG 17)

Trust in government relies on the transparent, reliable, and ethical use of data. Strengthening data capacity is critical for public access to information (SDG 16.10), evidence-based policymaking, and monitoring progress on the SDGs (SDG 17.18).

Research Needs

• Develop communication strategies to convey the importance of federal data in ways that build public trust and legitimacy.
• Identify high-value public datasets and analyze the upstream and downstream impacts of their availability or disappearance on SDG monitoring.
• Evaluate the staffing and technical capacity required for robust statistical functions, framing it as a matter of national readiness for achieving the 2030 Agenda.

Learning Opportunities

• Test public-facing AI tools that make government data more accessible and usable, increasing public awareness and utility.
• Pilot robust public engagement and participation opportunities in data governance, particularly with underrepresented groups, to ensure equitable data practices (SDG 16.7).
• Explore governance models for data collection and analysis roles that are shifting outside of government to ensure public oversight and accountability.

Design Challenges

• Develop public-facing data visualizations (e.g., data flow maps) to clearly communicate the government’s role in the data ecosystem.
• Strengthen public data governance through new institutional arrangements that ensure independence and integrity.
• Invest in public sector career pathways that reward and cultivate advanced data skills, building the capacity needed for data-driven governance.

Cross-Cutting Directions for Integrated SDG Advancement

Achieving the SDGs requires an integrated approach where trust and accountability are woven through all government functions.

Research Needs

• Identify successful models for communicating accountability measures to the public to reinforce the principles of SDG 16.6.
• Explore participatory and community-based methods for engaging citizens in oversight and performance measurement, directly advancing SDG 16.7.
• Analyze the compliance-based costs incurred by a lack of trust in government to build a stronger case for investment in trust-building initiatives.

Analysis of Sustainable Development Goals in the Article

1. Which SDGs are addressed or connected to the issues highlighted in the article?

   The article primarily addresses issues related to Sustainable Development Goal 16 and, to a lesser extent, Goal 17.

   • SDG 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions: The core theme of the article is the decline and potential rebuilding of public trust in government institutions. This directly aligns with SDG 16, which aims to “promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.” The article’s focus on government workforce, procurement, customer experience, and data transparency are all facets of building stronger, more accountable, and effective institutions.
   • SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals: The article implicitly connects to SDG 17 by emphasizing a multi-stakeholder approach to solving the problem of low trust. It calls for collaboration between “policymakers, academics, funders, and practitioners” and suggests “participatory or community based efforts to engage citizens.” This reflects the spirit of Target 17.17, which encourages effective public and civil society partnerships.

2. What specific targets under those SDGs can be identified based on the article’s content?

   Several specific targets under SDG 16 and SDG 17 can be identified from the article’s content:

   • Target 16.6: Develop effective, accountable and transparent institutions at all levels. This is the most central target. The entire article is an “opportunity agenda for those invested in rebuilding trust in government functions.” It explores improving accountability in procurement (“Trust Through Smarter Buying and Clearer Accountability”), enhancing effectiveness through better customer experience (“Trust as an Exercise in Proactive Service and Listening”), and promoting transparency through data accessibility (“Trust in Evidence, Transparency, Reliability, and Capacity”).
   • Target 16.7: Ensure responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making at all levels. The article explicitly calls for more participatory approaches. Under “Design Challenges” for customer experience, it suggests to “Embed use of authentic co-design and public engagement.” In the “Data” section, it proposes to “Explore public participation pilots in data collection and governance, particularly among underrepresented groups.” These points directly address the need for inclusive and participatory decision-making.
   • Target 16.10: Ensure public access to information. The section on “Data” is directly relevant to this target. It discusses the need to “communicate the importance of federal data to the public” and “Test public AI tools with strong user interfaces to make data more accessible and usable.” The call to “Develop public-facing data maps” also aims to improve public access to and understanding of government information.
   • Target 17.17: Encourage and promote effective public, public-private and civil society partnerships. The article’s methodology and recommendations support this target. The workshop itself brought together various participants, and the resulting agenda is for “policymakers, academics, funders, and practitioners.” The call for “participatory or community based efforts to engage citizens in public oversight, accountability and performance measurement” is a clear example of promoting partnerships between the public sector and civil society to strengthen institutions.

3. Are there any indicators mentioned or implied in the article that can be used to measure progress towards the identified targets?

   The article does not mention official SDG indicators, but it suggests numerous metrics and measures that can serve as practical indicators of progress towards the identified targets.

   • For Target 16.6 (Effective, accountable, transparent institutions):
     • Public trust measures: The central problem is “American trust in government institutions is at historic lows,” implying that tracking these trust levels is the primary indicator.
     • Public engagement metrics: The article suggests researching the relationship between news coverage and “different measures of public engagement with that agency (e.g., application rates to that agency?).”
     • Vendor and bidder experience surveys: In the procurement section, a learning opportunity is to “develop, refine, and use vendor and bidder experience surveys as part of trust-building.”
     • Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): The customer experience section suggests to “Link CX and public outcomes transparently through KPIs tied to delivery.”
   • For Target 16.7 (Responsive, inclusive, participatory decision-making):
     • Use of co-design and public engagement: An indicator would be the extent to which agencies “Embed use of authentic co-design and public engagement.”
     • Pilots for public participation: Progress could be measured by the number and success of “public participation pilots in data collection and governance, particularly among underrepresented groups.”
     • Community-based oversight efforts: The existence and effectiveness of “participatory or community based efforts to engage citizens in public oversight, accountability and performance measurement.”
   • For Target 16.10 (Public access to information):
     • Data accessibility and usability: Progress could be measured by the deployment of “public AI tools with strong user interfaces to make data more accessible and usable.”
     • Procurement transparency measures: The article suggests studying the “impacts of various kinds of procurement transparency on public confidence (e.g.,taking different approaches around contracts, bids, subcontractors, progress, cost overruns, and past performance).”

SDGs, Targets, and Indicators Analysis

Source: fas.org