6 Conclusions and recommendations Trust is currently an issue of great public interest: trust in the present government and in government at large, trust in consumer affairs, and trust in each other. But the trust between citizen and government is being eroded. This particular issue plays a major part in the day-to-day work of the National Ombudsman. Citizens who resort to the National Ombudsman have often lost their trust in government because government has failed to live up to their expectations. Proper treatment by authorities can actually increase citizens’ trust in government. An important factor in this respect is the interaction between confidence in systems and trust in people. When a system fails and confidence in it is declining, representatives of government can help to rebuild it via the sense of personal trust they inspire in citizens in the course of their everyday casework. To do this, however, they must themselves adopt a trusting attitude towards the citizens with whom they have dealings. Section 4 cites some situations in which trust and confidence in government were lost, but these are just a few of the many examples brought to the attention of the National Ombudsman. What conclusions can be drawn from his experience with regard to strengthening the bond of trust between government and citizen? Government action has an ever more profound effect on the day-to-day lives of individual citizens. Primary and secondary legislation has created a sophisticated and highly complex system of rights and responsibilities. Government’s main instruments of control are, firstly, statutory rules and regulations and, secondly, budgets. It uses these legal and economic measures to encourage some forms of behaviour and discourage others. This means that heavy emphasis is placed on the reliability of systems. Although both types of instruments are important in terms of developing trust between government and citizen, they ultimately fall short in this respect. What is needed is a concrete way to change the attitudes and behaviour of politicians, administrators and officials towards individual citizens. Within the established legal and financial frameworks, government is still evolving as a set of sub-systems with a constant tendency to display ‘system behaviour’: that is, it acts within the established legislative, regulatory and financial frameworks, but loses sight of the justifiable desires of individual citizens. A heavy emphasis is currently placed on the reliability of systems, while too little attention is paid to the need to foster a sense of personal trust. Conclusions and recommendations | 19 Pagina 18
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