Citizen accessing trusted digital government services through a secure online platform | DXC Technology

Article | August 18, 2026

Trusted digital government starts with resilience

Citizens who avoid an online benefit portal may prefer not to spend much time online or maintain any online presence. Or they may be experiencing a temporary outage. But just as likely, they might be nervous about uploading identity documents. In the wider context, they could be wondering who can see their health, tax or family data as it moves across agencies. That’s the sharper digital divide facing public sector leaders.

Access still matters, but adoption increasingly depends on confidence. In public service, a technology failure shows up as slower care, delayed benefits and missed court dates, not as an isolated IT issue.

Digital government will earn trust when resilience, cybersecurity and privacy become visible parts of the citizen experience, not just by adding more portals.

The digital divide is becoming a trust divide

The United Nations says 1.89 billion people are on the wrong side of the digital divide. That number is usually read as an infrastructure or skills problem, which is correct. But for mature public sectors, it should also prompt a harder question: why do people who can use digital services still choose not to?

Part of the answer is trust. Pew Research Center found that 71% of Americans are concerned about how the government uses people’s data (up from 64% in 2019). Citizens may cherish convenience, but they’re also calculating risk. Processes that srequire eligibility, health records or financial support information, for example, can feel like exposure without assurance.

Modernization hasn’t solved citizen confidence

The World Bank’s 2025 GovTech Maturity Index shows why the gap persists. Core government systems and public service delivery have received more attention since 2022, yet digital citizen engagement remains the least mature area globally. The report also notes that only a few economies could provide strong evidence of platform performance, citing weak monitoring and reporting.

A government can have a modern back office and still ask residents to re-enter information. It can publish privacy notices and still fail to explain what data is collected, why it’s needed and how misuse will be prevented.

Making connections

The OECD makes the operating problem concrete: 83% of OECD countries have a data interoperability system, but in countries with such systems, only 56% of public institutions use it to share data. The pipes exist, but the operating model is often missing.

Cyber risk compounds the issue. The World Economic Forum reports that 38% of public-sector respondents see their cyber resilience as inadequate, while 49% say they lack the talent needed to meet cybersecurity goals. For a citizen, that’s a question of whether services will be available and whether personal information will be protected.

Resilience has to be designed into the citizen journey

The practical response is not to slow modernization. It’s to shift the test from “did we deploy the platform?” to “can citizens safely depend on the service?”

That means designing services around failure as well as success:

If an online form goes down, can a citizen continue to a call center, an assisted digital channel or an in-person route without starting again?
If identity checks fail, is there a dignified exception path?
If data is shared among departments, can citizens see the purpose and consent model?
If AI is used, can leaders explain accountability and appeal?

These are not technical questions for the IT department to answer alone. They’re executive design choices about continuity, inclusion and legitimacy.

Put this knowledge to work

Public-sector leaders should treat trust as an operational metric. Start with one mission-critical service where failure has visible consequences: benefits, licensing, patient access, courts, housing or tax. Map where citizens lose confidence. Then modernize the foundations around that journey: uptime, recovery, identity, consent, data sharing, human support, cyber monitoring and plain-language transparency.

The goal is not a digital-only government. It’s a dependable government that gives citizens confidence to use digital channels because they know the service will work, their data will be protected and support will be available if it doesn’t.

Resilience is now part of the public-sector promise. Leaders who make it visible in the citizen experience won’t only reduce risk; they’ll expand access, improve uptake and rebuild the trust digital government needs to succeed.