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Digital government platforms can increase trust when they make public services easier to use, more reliable and more transparent. But citizens also judge who is responsible for the service and who controls their data. A 2026 Kenya survey experiment found that simply learning about a county-government portal raised trust in government overall; highlighting the telecom partner increased intended use but reduced trust in government among some users.
What the Kenya My County Hub study found
My County Hub is an online service created by Kenya’s 47 county governments with telecommunications company Safaricom. It is intended to let residents request emergency services, pay business-permit and parking charges, and find government information.
In a study reported by MIT News on 15 October 2026, the MIT Governance Lab and Busara showed different descriptions of the portal to more than 11,000 online survey participants. One description said the county government was responsible, another highlighted Safaricom, and a third presented the service as a public-private partnership.
Participants generally expressed more trust in government after learning about My County Hub. The attribution mattered, however:
#1 Best Overall
| Message shown to participants | Intended use of the portal | Subsequent trust in government | What the result suggests |
|---|---|---|---|
| County government alone | Positive interest | Higher than in the Safaricom-only condition | Citizens credited government for a useful service. |
| Safaricom alone | Higher willingness to use the portal and greater interest in learning more | Lower than in the government-only condition | A familiar private operator improved adoption signals but could make government appear less competent or less responsible. |
| Government and Safaricom partnership | Interest in the service | Higher among people who initially trusted both institutions | Co-branding worked differently depending on existing attitudes. |
The effect was not uniform. The decline linked to Safaricom-only attribution was driven by people who already trusted Safaricom but distrusted government. For participants who initially trusted both government and Safaricom, partnership messaging increased trust. These are results from a survey experiment involving a specific Kenyan service, not proof that every public-private platform will produce the same outcome.
For context, MIT News reported that 43% of people trusted the Kenyan government in a 2023 survey. That baseline helps explain why a well-functioning digital service could improve perceptions while still leaving concern about government capability and accountability.
Why branding changes the trust outcome
Credit signals competence
When a government clearly owns a service that works, users can attribute convenience, speed and problem resolution to public institutions. Digitization then becomes visible evidence that government can deliver.
Rank #2
Responsibility signals accountability
If a private company is presented as the sole provider, users may wonder whether government is merely outsourcing a core duty. A smooth interface can increase willingness to transact without increasing confidence that elected or administrative institutions will answer for failures, fees or delays.
Prior beliefs filter the message
People do not approach a new portal with neutral expectations. Existing confidence in government, confidence in the technology partner and views about privatization shape how they interpret the same logo or description. A single national trust score can therefore hide sharply different reactions among user groups.
Choosing an attribution model
Before launch, agencies should decide what the service is meant to build: immediate usage, confidence in a particular institution, or both. The following framework separates the main trade-offs.
Rank #3
| Attribution approach | Accountability signal | Adoption opportunity | Long-term trust risk | Conditions for using it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Government-only | Clear public ownership and responsibility | May be weaker where government systems have a poor reputation | Service failures attach directly to government | Use when the agency can meet published service standards and provide support. |
| Co-branded public-private partnership | Shared responsibility, which must be explained precisely | Can combine public legitimacy with a partner’s reach or technical capability | Users may be unsure who handles complaints, data or outages | Publish a responsibility map, data-sharing terms and escalation path beside the service. |
| Private-led attribution | Government responsibility can become difficult to see | May produce the strongest initial interest or familiarity | Users may credit the company for success and blame government for policy or service problems | Reserve for functions where legal authority, oversight and remedies remain visibly public. |
Safeguards that make a digital service trustworthy
Privacy and data governance
Explain what information is collected, why it is needed, how long it is retained, who can access it and how a resident can correct or delete it where the law permits. Contracts with technology partners should prohibit secondary uses that users would not reasonably expect. Publish a plain-language privacy notice before account creation, not after a transaction.
Security and human-rights protection
Use strong authentication, encryption, least-privilege access and tested incident-response procedures. A digital identity system should not become the only route to an essential benefit without an alternative for people who cannot authenticate electronically. Security controls must be balanced with due process, freedom from unreasonable surveillance and a way to challenge an automated or erroneous decision.
Inclusion and accessibility
Design for low bandwidth, older phones, assistive technologies and users with limited digital literacy. Offer local-language guidance where appropriate, accessible forms and a staffed non-digital channel. Track completion and failure rates by gender, age, disability, location, language and connectivity level so that an impressive average does not conceal exclusion.
Rank #4
Visible accountability
Put the legally responsible agency’s name and contact details on every critical screen. State which organization approves a payment, resolves an emergency request, handles a complaint and compensates users when the service fails. A partner’s role—hosting, payments, identity verification or support—should be described rather than implied by a logo.
Interoperability and procurement
Build on reusable digital public infrastructure, including interoperable identity and data-exchange components, instead of locking essential records into one vendor’s proprietary system. Procurement documents should require portability, security testing, accessibility conformance, service-level reporting and an exit plan. This keeps public control credible when a contract ends or a provider changes.
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How governments should measure trust
Trust should be an explicit policy objective, not an assumed side effect of putting a service online. The OECD/CAF Digital Government Review of Latin America and the Caribbean, published in 2023 from analysis conducted in 2020–2022, recommends making trust a strategic priority in national digital-government strategies and adopting explicit indicators.
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The review found that 88% of Latin American and Caribbean countries had a central or federal digital-government organization, 59% had digital-government coordination bodies and 94% had adopted a national digital-government strategy. Those structures help only if agencies measure whether people experience services as dependable and fair.
Use a balanced scorecard
- Service performance: completion rate, time to complete, error rate, uptime and unresolved cases.
- Access: use and success rates by demographic group, device, connection type, language and assisted channel.
- Transparency: whether users can identify the responsible agency, understand data practices and find an appeal route.
- Institutional trust: repeat surveys that ask separately about the service, the government agency and any private partner.
- Accountability: complaint resolution time, correction rates and outcomes after incidents.
Measure these indicators before launch and at regular intervals. The Kenya findings show why a single adoption metric is inadequate: a platform can attract users while weakening confidence in the institution that is supposed to govern it.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.A practical implementation sequence
- Define the public purpose. Specify the service problem, the agency legally accountable for it and the outcome residents should receive.
- Map every participant. Document the roles of ministries, counties, vendors, telecom operators, payment processors and support staff. Convert the map into user-facing responsibility and escalation information.
- Test attribution before launch. Use message testing or a randomized survey to compare government-only, partnership and partner-led descriptions. Analyze results by prior trust, not only by the overall average.
- Complete privacy and inclusion reviews. Conduct data-protection, security, human-rights and accessibility assessments; provide a usable offline or assisted alternative.
- Publish measurable commitments. State service targets, outage notices, complaint channels, data-retention rules and independent oversight arrangements.
- Monitor and adjust. Combine operational data with repeat trust surveys. If usage rises while institutional trust falls, revise attribution, accountability or service quality rather than treating adoption as success.
What the evidence does—and does not—show
The Kenya experiment demonstrates that digital delivery and institutional trust are connected but not interchangeable. A portal can feel convenient because of a private partner’s technology or reach, while users still ask whether government is capable of delivering public services and answerable when something goes wrong.
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Its setting also matters. The participants were reached online in Kenya, the intervention concerned one county-government portal and the findings reflect attitudes toward government and Safaricom at that time. Results may differ in countries with different levels of connectivity, public-sector performance, privacy protection or trust in telecommunications companies. Governments should therefore test their own messages and monitor their own users instead of importing the Kenyan effect as a universal rule.
The durable lesson is conditional: make the service genuinely useful, keep public responsibility visible, protect people and their data, provide inclusive alternatives, and measure trust directly alongside usage. Under those conditions, digitization can give citizens concrete reasons to believe government is competent and responsive.
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