“The question ‘How can we restore trust?’…is on everyone’s lips. The answer is pretty obvious. First be trustworthy. Second provide other’s with good evidence of your trustworthiness”. Baroness Onora O’Neil.

Benefits, risks and public trust in technology innovations are usually the focus of political and societal attention. Almost entirely overlooked is the need for the governance of these technologies, in its own right, to be trustworthy and to earn public trust.

The importance of this became clear during Covid, when trust in the approvals process of the vaccine was as important to public confidence as trust in the vaccines themselves.

Our research and consultation sought to understand the drivers of trust and sources of distrust and use that knowledge to consider how tech governance may differ, and in what ways, if trustworthiness and the earning of trust were considered and systematically incorporated into governance institutions and governance design.

This work was well received with invitations to present to World Economic Forum at Davos and Global Futures Council meetings, at the UN, the OECD, the UK government, and many more government, academic, business and civil society groups.

We also adapted it for other policy and commercials contexts, including a significant project on trust and healthcare for the Irish national health service the HSE to put earning public trust at the heart of their strategy.