Transparency and Public Trust

Transparancy and Public Trust

Transparency and Public Trust

Each of the administrator examples given are a good representative of what it means to be transparent in order to gain and keep the public's trust. All three people work in different agencies so the steps that they take and the processes in place will be different from agency to agency. However, one example stood out from the rest. Not because it was so much better than the other examples, but because of the processes in place that is unique to the service provided. Maurice's transcript is chosen as the one providing an excellent example of transparency and accountability for his organization.

Maurice alludes to the fact that he works for a foster care agency and when children are involved, extra care and concern, in addition to transparency and accountability must be applied. He states that because of legal and financial obligations, the agency strives to allocate funds appropriately for the good of the children. But, what stood out for this organization is the fact that every ninety (90) days the Department of Human Resources looks at all of the agencies files (foster parent, employee, client, etc.) to make sure that the foster care agency is doing everything exactly the way they are supposed to. If the Department of Human Resources performed these audits on a six-month or more basis, there is a possibility that the service provided might not be as good. The ninety (90) day audit keeps employees on their toes and makes them constantly aware that excellent service is a must.

Gaining the public's trust is important because if the public is satisfied with the service the organization provides, this generally means they trust the organization. Hurricane Katrina and FEMA's response to it is an excellent example of an agency not being accountable and therefore losing the public's trust. According to Fard and Rostamy, the way to create public distrust is to show lack of accountability (2007). Even though FEMA has been revamped, because of how the hurricane was handled by this agency, the public's trust probably still isn't fully restored. Once the trust has been broken, it is difficult to repair. Even though trust can be rebuilt by apologizing and giving a detailed explanation of what went wrong, organizations must sometimes go to great extents to gain the trust back (Poppo and Schepker, 2010).

Three steps that can be taken to provide transparency and accountability is to first refer back to the mission statement to get a clear sense of what the organization stands for and how it will serve the public. All employees should be reminded of the mission statement on a regular basis. Next, processes and procedures must be clearly written out, understood and agreed upon with each and every employee of the organization. A signed form acknowledging these processes and procedure should be placed in every employee's file. A third and very important step is to have regular checks and balances (audits) to make sure everything is running the way that it should. An organization that is solid with transparency and accountability is an organization that has gained the public's trust.