Earning public trust in Contact-Tracing Apps — governance is the key

How to earn public trust in the contact-tracing strategy is THE policy question of the moment. The confidence and cooperation of citizens is essential and the earning of trust the likely defining factor between success and failure.

The best place to start is by taking the advice of trust expert Baroness Onora O’Neill who says — “…the answer is pretty obvious. First, be trustworthy. Second, provide others with good evidence that you are trustworthy.”

This is fundamentally about governance and regulation. I’ve spent the last 18 months considering how the governance of technology can earn public trust (www.tigtech.org) and here is what we found:

To be seen as trustworthy, satisfactory answers will be needed to these questions:

What is the process for deciding if this is the right approach and why?

How will diverse perspectives and values sets be incorporated and what are the criteria the decision will be based on?

How will citizen’s views and values be heard and incorporated?

What’s the process for navigating all-important ethical or human rights issues — who gets a say in that? How and by whom will decisions on priorities and trade offs be made?

What is the process for designing the rules and regulations about the use and restrictions on the approach and the app? How will these decisions be enforced with those who make the apps?

Where will the evidence of the trustworthiness of the institutions, this process and its outcomes be found?

Here are some ideas about what the evidence of trustworthiness may look like and some of the ‘Trust Traps’ to avoid.

The 10 drivers of trust and the causes of distrust

Unusually, scholars seem to broadly agree on the key ‘drivers of trust’. These are the behaviours that trusted individuals, institutions, processes display, which earn or destroy trust. They focus on values — the underlying intentions and principles which guide actions and behaviours — and competencies — which underpin the ability to deliver against these values and expectations.

They are such familiar terms. Their very familiarity may mean their importance is overlooked or underestimated. But these are not just words, abstract concepts or academic theories, they describe qualities and behaviours that fundamentally matter to us as human beings — psychologically and sociologically. They are the foundations of trustworthiness and trust.

5 Values Drivers

Psychology shows we are more likely to forgive errors of competence than errors of values. The major causes of distrust are almost always based on a breach of these values drivers or a clash of the values and beliefs that we as individuals hold dear.

Intent: governance for the public good

Though some believe that humans are fundamentally selfish, the crisis has upheld the many studies which show our first inclination is to cooperate and not compete. We also have similarly ingrained tendencies towards selfishness. Both of these can be seen quite clearly in different responses to the COVID crisis (speaking personally, perhaps by the same person almost simultaneously!)

The public good aspiration of protecting the vulnerable, preventing a second wave of infections and allowing economic activity to resume must be real — if the strategy and the app is not considered by trusted sources (medics and healthcare professionals and virus containment specialists particularly) to be the right thing for this containment task, or it is not effective in doing this, it will fail.

Straw polls I have taken among people of different age groups suggest that the evidence of this public good intent and its effectiveness in delivery will be the deal-breaker between their use and avoidance of the app and support of the strategy.

Trust trap:

To let the need for speed mean that the values, ethics and human rights issues are skated over, ignored or hidden will make trust difficult to achieve. It will also fail if any sense that the commercial priorities of those designing the app, or the political priorities of the government have influenced or compromised the public good aspect of the design of the app or the governance process.

To earn trust:

It is important to make explicit and open the consideration of what does ‘the public good’ mean in this instance. That the process of deciding priorities, trade-offs, ethics, human rights issues and the impact on individuals have been considered and incorporated into its design boundaries. Also how the potential for compromise by commercial (including NHS needs) or political priorities have been actively guarded against; or where allowed, why and for what reason.

Respect — including citizen involvement & agency

Trust Trap:

The need to feel respected is fundamental to our inclination to trust. The failure to respect and take seriously alternative views and contrary opinions, sometimes the active silencing of these views, has been a critical factor in past governance failures and the biggest driver of distrust.

Perhaps the most valuable finding of the TIGTech project is the importance of taking seriously the opinions of others — particularly those we don’t agree with or who’s values and beliefs clash with our own.

To earn trust:

We are more likely to trust governance when we can see we are respected, our views and values count — even where these perspectives could not be fully aligned in the final decision. Governance must actively solicit, consider, understand, incorporate and show respect for all perspectives, particularly from those who may disagree about the use or value of the strategy and app.

This may not only be important for trust, but awareness of critical issues may come to light which would otherwise be missed. Nobel Prize-winning Economist Daniel Kahneman urges us not to dismiss views that seem wrong or irrational, but use them as stimulus for new thinking — ask: “under what circumstances could this be true,” and be open to surprising results.

Importance to trust also is the belief that we have agency in shaping outcomes. A detailed understanding of why this important and where citizen’s views could support governance is given here on the Nuffield Council on Bioethics blog by expert Simon Burrall. He suggests that the involvement of citizens could generate robust evidence about perspectives on, for example, the:

• trade-offs between benefits, risks and wider social harms and the impact these are having on uptake and use;
• trustworthiness of the app and the evidence it generates to inform policy and the extent to which these are changing over time;
• design and implementation of governance and accountability systems necessary to support trustworthiness;
• identification of unintended consequences; and
• the app itself (including how user friendly it is) to inform future iterations.

‘We don’t have the time’ is the rationale cited so far for the failure to engage different perspectives, particularly that of citizens. This is understandable given the breakneck speed that decisions have to be made and the difficulties of engagement under lockdown. But many citizens are clamouring to be heard. Involvement initiatives can be scaled up quite quickly, with new technologies supporting design for ‘collective intelligence’, and citizens engaged in a matter of days if the will is there. I would argue it is essential for earning trust in the governance of this app and should be done immediately.

Openness and transparency

Trust Trap:

A key driver of distrust is the belief (and often the reality) that institutions and processes are secretive, aloof and the decision-making processes opaque. Governance design processes are usually conducted out of the public spotlight, partly because that’s just the way it’s done out of necessity and partly, perhaps rightly in most cases, it is considered that citizens are not really interested in such an arcane process anyway. But this may not be true in such an important and high profile governance area.

The government has been heavily criticised for lack of transparency about the development of their COVID strategies. It will weigh heavily on public trust if decisions around the use and governance of the app are conducted in secret and limited and carefully curated soundbites the only information shared.

To earn trust:

Practice ‘radical transparency’? Open up the policy and governance design processes and its outcomes and provide explanations about the purpose and focus of the governance, what happens when and how decisions are made and what they are. It will be important that a ‘trusted environment’ is designed for this process so that all those participating can feel they trust the process.

The governance design process is not often geared up to this, but perhaps a dedicated website could be created for this purpose? If, as recommended by the recent report of the House of Commons and House of Lords Joint Committee on Human Rights proposes an independent body was set up — the Digital Contact Tracing Human Rights Commissioner — this would be an important role for them.

They must also communicate in plain language which we can all understand, and used different media which appeals to different audiences eg using infographics, podcasts other than just long documents or ‘man from the ministry’ set pieces to camera. (As does the Bank of England in all its documents at the insistence of Mark Carney — if they can do it, so can anyone else!)

Honesty and integrity

The potential trade-offs between public goods, human rights, economics, mental health and the potential for abuse and ’slippery slopes’ of surveillance when using the app are incredibly complex to navigate and regulate. There will be mistakes and unpopular, potentially agonisingly difficult decisions to make.

Trust Trap:

Honesty and integrity (lack of ‘corruption’ by self or vested interests) is considered by the OECD in their Trust and Public Policy report to perhaps be the most important driver of trust and distrust in public institutions globally. The potential trust traps here may be about the integrity of the process and distance from vested interests, particularly commercial and political ones.

There may be severe temptation to manipulate information to minimise negative impacts because of the politically unpopular and unpalatable choices which may have to be made. Leaders often feel that admitting mistakes makes them look weak, so they go into denial or try to smooth over or hide problems by contorted, but in reality, totally obvious attempts to divert attention or rationalise problems as something else.

To earn trust

The governance process must be conducted with the utmost integrity and stringent measures taken to ensure vested commercial or political interests to not subvert the governance process.

Also, honesty, and owning up to mistakes is paramount. It’s never the problem — it’s the cover-up that turns a problem into a disaster. Those designing the governance must be straight, authentic and honest. Not evasive or concealing the true state of affairs. Share why there is a problem and what is being done to rectifying it and be open about the potential negative effects .

OECD Trust metrics have been used by many institutions, such as the UK’s Food Standards Agency. They have demonstrated over time that trust in institutions can even increase despite significant problems if the response is honest, open and timely, with explanations about what went wrong and how the problem will be rectified.

Fairness

According to the OECD Trust in Public Policy research, positive perceptions of fairness “lead to greater acceptance of decisions, better compliance with regulations, and more co-operative behaviour in dealing with agents of the government”. We will accept decisions which are to our personal detriment, even a financial penalty if we believe the process is fair.

Trust Trap:

Unfairness is one of the most powerful drivers of distrust, the potential for unfairness through unfair trade-offs, inappropriate surveillance, misuse of data or design bias, inappropriate enforcement and many more are massive trust traps which governance must ensure are avoided.

To earn trust

The ethics of fairness is being widely considered within technical aspects of AI and data ethics. This must be applied here in the design of the app, with the value of fairness explicit in governance design, application and enforcement. Its use will, probably inevitably cause problems and unfairness. Fairness ‘by design’ systems of compensation & recompense must also be incorporated into governance design and outcomes.

The competence drivers of Effectiveness, Accountability, Proportionality, Consistency and Responsiveness will underpin and help deliver on these Values Drivers.

Next Steps:

These are outline observations which will now form the basis of a consultation process with stakeholders involved in governance, ethics and stakeholder involvement. We will join a number of organisations and individuals in seeking to focus the government's attention in delivering on what it takes to earn trust in the Contact-tracing strategy and the use of the app.

I would be very interested in any views, suggestion, criticisms either in the comments below or to me by email — hilary@societyinside.com.

If an earlier article on Trust and Covid national communications strategy is of interest, see here: https://medium.com/@hilary_4230/trust-and-covid-19-bb63d61def90