ETHOS Roundtable: The Trust Imperative
The ETHOS Roundtable was conducted in August 2025 with a group of participants in the 17th Leaders in Governance Programme (LGP)
Last updated 20 July 2026
ETHOS Digital Issue 14, Nov 2025
PARTICIPANTS:
Ms Gerardine Clifford-Lidstone, Secretary and Chief Executive, Ministry for Pacific Peoples, New Zealand
Ms Ha Yu-Kyung, Director General, Global Education Planning Bureau, Ministry of Education, Republic of Korea
Mr Mohd Fraziali Bin Ismail, Assistant Governor, Governor's Office, Bank Negara, Malaysia
In your view, what are the most significant governance challenges today?
FRAZIALI: I would say mistrust and misinformation are the most significant challenges of our time. There are many factors that have contributed to this. One of these is how today’s social media algorithms, instead of connecting people, are putting us into echo chambers.
The second challenge is what we call the twin transition — the need to pursue digitalisation as well as decarbonisation in light of climate change. We are working to address these goals with businesses and the public at large. To some degree, the pandemic gave us a terrific platform for more businesses to go online.
This makes conversations more difficult, at a time when we already need to have difficult conversations about policy issues. It can be dispiriting to see how hard it is to get difficult but necessary conversations going, particularly around long-term issues. Most of the discourse is focused on short termism and immediate reactions.
CLIFFORD-LIDSTONE: We live in an age of polycrisis, where narrow, short-term, reactive policies are vulnerable to collapse under strain. A failure to invest in the future — including long-term social resilience and cohesion — can easily lead to policy failures that in turn result in a loss of public trust and an erosion of confidence in our public institutions.
The group I work closely with, the Pacific peoples in New Zealand, are particularly prone to bearing the brunt of system failure, widening inequality, and subsequent disengagement from civil and public life — especially among younger people. This is a significant loss and wasted opportunity, since we are neglecting a whole generation who represent the future of the country.
We are also looking to digital technology to help us improve service delivery and transform our public sector. But we are also keeping a close eye on its risks, such as the impact on privacy and cybersecurity.
HA: In the context of Korean education policy, one of the most pressing challenges is our low birth rate and the resulting decline in local communities. In response, our Ministry of Education has been aiming to consolidate our system for better education and care, such as improving early childhood education. We are also trying to attract more international students who can contribute to Korea’s future talent pool. For example, we have introduced the Study Korea 300K Project1 to attract more than 300,000 international students to Korea by 2027. As part of this initiative, we want to support them to become meaningful members — and, where possible, citizens — of our society. To support this, we have recently established a dedicated division to strengthen multicultural education.
This entails not only providing basic support services for international students but also nurturing an inclusive and cohesive multicultural mindset in Korean society over the long term.
How can government and communities work together to address complex, longer term policy issues?
CLIFFORD-LIDSTONE: We have to be bold enough to reimagine how we serve communities. We need to disrupt the conventional power imbalance in which the government, with its systems, is seen as the leader and the community is seen as a receiver of goods. Quantitative data can tell us what the problem is; qualitative data can tell us why people behave in a way that causes the problem to arise. Without gleaning that understanding from communities themselves and paring the data too early with policy design, our policy responses are not going to fix the issue: they will either be too late, or lead to disparities and failures again down the road.
One really good example I had was in health service design. Following a suicide cluster in a community with a youthful population, strong cultural resilience, and significant inequities, we recognised the urgent need to rethink how health services were delivered to young people. Rather than imposing a top-down solution, we initiated a co-design process that placed young people at the centre of the conversation.
We brought together students from local schools and asked them to design what an accessible, supportive health service would look like for their peers. Their insights were powerful and practical: they emphasised the importance of spaces that felt safe and welcoming, and they identified the receptionist, not the doctor, as the most critical person in the system because they were the first point of contact.
Quantitative data can tell us what the problem is; qualitative data can tell us why people behave in a way that causes the problem to arise.
One of the most striking insights from the co-design process was the importance of confidentiality in a small community. Young people told us they didn’t want their families or neighbours to know they were accessing sexual or mental health services. Even something as simple as a car parked outside a clinic could signal why they were there. To address this, they proposed that carparks should not be visible from the road, a design feature that seems minor but was critical to encouraging access. These were considerations we would never have thought of without their input, and they fundamentally shaped the service design.
This collaborative approach resulted in a health service model that is now operational. It marked a fundamental shift from traditional commissioning to a model grounded in community voice and lived experience, one that acknowledges resilience while addressing inequities.
FRAZIALI: I want to look at the example of financial literacy, which is becoming vital in the modern life journey. In the past, wherever there was an important issue to raise, the government would roll out a nation-wide education programme and push it out, through schools and universities. Increasingly, however, for a topic that touches every aspect of life, this mode of teaching is no longer enough — in fact, it may be ignored as yet another government campaign.
Instead, we now need to think about how to turn real life experiences, in relation to the topic of financial issues, into teachable moments. The approach cannot be one-size-fits-all: it must cater to people of different ages and backgrounds. It has to be multimodal and use a range of outreach platforms, from textbooks to talks to social media.
For this issue, our approach as a central bank has been to go to the ground — to schools, universities, the public — and get their feedback on what their real issues and questions are. We also provide platforms for them to give us feedback at their own pace. We get a better sense of the right way to impart knowledge to them. We measure how financially literate they are and whether it is improving. We also partner with financial institutions and other partners in the financial education network to aid in this effort.
All these take time and investment — but it is one that pays off. That said, it can look costly and a waste of time, if the institutional commitment is not there.
We now need to think about how to turn real life experiences into teachable moments. The approach cannot be one-size-fits-all: it must cater to people of different ages and backgrounds.
HA: Seoul, our capital, is densely populated and expensive. But this is also because both leading universities and economic opportunities are concentrated in the capital, which creates a vicious cycle where regional cities continue to decline and the capital continues to be even more crowded and competitive. To promote more balanced development, the Korean government is encouraging regional cities outside Seoul to become more attractive places for people to live and work.
One of the ways we do this is to foster cooperation between excellent regional universities and industry. These local universities are focusing on attracting international students from neighbouring countries, such as Vietnam. There are two advantages to this approach. By taking up internships in local businesses, ambitious and well-educated international students can gain experience of working in Korea, which may lead to stable jobs in the future. In turn, these local businesses, which lack the broader exposure and networks of large Seoul-based conglomerates, can grow their cultural understanding and international talent pool by taking in these students.
This is an example of how community partners can contribute to broader national challenges in ways that benefit them as well.
As governments, how can we best build trust and engagement with our public in a media-saturated and low-trust environment?
CLIFFORD-LIDSTONE: As the New Zealand Government’s principal advisor on matters relating to the Pacific community, I do not need to know everything that occurs, but I do need to know someone that does know, so networks and relationships matter. I personally believe that it is good to interact face-to-face. Relationship building is time-consuming, and communities do not operate in a linear fashion, so I do spend a lot of time talking about everything all sorts of issues that communities face. This is important for developing the relationship, which will stands me in good stead in times of crisis. During COVID-19 for example, I was able to really leverage these established relationships. Community insights and relationships formed the basis of our response.
The issue with misinformation and disinformation is that while cohorts in our population are receiving information primarily through social media, government agencies do not push information out through those platforms proactively enough yet. It may appear in traditional platforms such as newspapers, but it is not reaching younger people where they are, which means they cannot make informed decisions quickly enough.
FRAZIALI: I am in charge of monetary policy, which is a very technical subject. One thing we do is make sure we carefully identify our audiences, and tailor our communications, including language and platform, to each. When talking about a technical subject to the public, for instance, you should make it easier for them to understand it without compromising the content. This is not about dumbing down, but about translation: simplifying the explanations without oversimplifying the ideas.
We also have to be aware of potential misinformation and negative perceptions around a particular subject, so that we can engage with care about them and clear up misperceptions. For example, this might be about raising interest rates, which is an emotive subject. People may not appreciate the economic benefits of it: they only see their borrowing rates go up. They may even have heard misinformation to say it is being done to protect bank profit margins. When you explain the issue to the public, you have to address these perceptions, as well as how the changes will benefit them, in a language they can understand.
So whenever we have a technical topic, we also develop a simpler version, and we repeat the message across different platforms. We have come to realise that we in government are not always the best spokesperson for a subject. We just do not speak that language. It can be better if a message does not come from us, but instead from external parties, such as financial advisors or influencers. We invest in educating these intermediaries, so they can grasp the issues and help us disseminate the message in a way their audiences are more comfortable with.
HA: In the education field, there is growing concern that technological advances may sometimes hurt social cohesion and make it harder for people to make sound judgements. We therefore need to emphasise balance: intensive use of educational technology must be accompanied by equally strong social and emotional support.
For example, Korea is known to be a high-tech society. To address the unavoidable impact of AI in education, we are emphasising the capacity of teachers — the most important element is not the technology itself, but the teacher’s ability to use it appropriately for education. Our AI in education policy therefore focuses on further elevating the role of teachers and strengthening a wide range of training and support to build their capacity to use AI in education. Teachers must be able to guide students to use these tools safely and effectively.
Another priority is media and digital literacy education — teaching students to identify and use reliable information so that they are not misled. This includes healthy digital behaviours — such as what we call “photo-quette”: asking for consent before taking photos or uploading them, to respect others’ feelings when using these digital devices.
To address the unavoidable impact of AI in education, we are emphasising the capacity of teachers — the most important element is not the technology itself, but the teacher’s ability to use it appropriately for education.
How might we measure the impact of efforts to build public trust and investments in co-creation?
FRAZIALI: Given the current context and the power of online algorithms, we must always be on our guard lest we let misinformation or biases nudge us into a bad situation.
Sometimes we might face difficulty in explaining tough or complex issues like exchange rates or monetary policy. We have stumbled and faced public outcry over the perception of certain issues. But as we invested more in communication and adjusted our approach to suit different contexts and audiences, we do see some impact. Public anger over some misperceptions do cool, for instance.
You can’t make everyone happy on every issue. But to the extent that people mention their concerns less or talk about an issue in a more nuanced and informed way, we are making progress.
HA: This is a tricky question for the education field, because the result of our efforts is usually invisible, long term, and not easy to measure. However, we can continue to nurture civic dialogue. This is not easy, especially in a society like Korea where education is a deeply felt issue that everyone has an opinion on.
We recently established a National Education Commission that involves members of both the ruling and opposition parties, civil society activists, parents and students. They discuss issues such as college admissions policies, with the aim of reaching a public consensus on how we are doing and how education should evolve in the future. This can be a painstaking process, but it is vital in a modern, democratic society.
CLIFFORD-LIDSTONE: Governments and public service are getting very good at establishing measures and indicators. The bigger challenge will be: does a policy measure make sense to the citizens, and do citizens think that these measures made a difference to their lives? We have to constantly find ways to ensure that communities agree that the policy intervention suits their needs.
As a public sector leader, the challenge is how to enable an environment that allows all kinds of multifaceted thinking, addressing wicked policy problems, breaking down silos and working across agencies, and involving academia, the private sector and civil society. As government officials, we must not have our heads down so much on our issues that we forget to look up and reach into all of these other brains.
The ETHOS Roundtable was conducted in August 2025 with a group of participants in the 17th Leaders in Governance Programme (LGP). Organised annually by the Civil Service College, the LGP draws from Singapore’s development experience to offer practical insights into the fundamentals of good governance and effective policy implementation for sustainable economic development and social cohesion. Over the seven-day programme, participants interact with thought leaders, and visit key government agencies to understand their operating philosophies and values.
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