Trust and citizen engagement: An enabler for Ireland’s digital and AI ambition

Ireland’s Digital Public Services Plan 2030 and National Digital and AI Strategy set out one of the most ambitious digital transformation agendas the Irish public sector has ever undertaken, writes Siobhan Ray, Head of Platforms, Fexco Managed and Advisory Services.

The targets are clear: 100 per cent of key public services online and 90 per cent digital consumption by 2030, delivered through a life events approach spanning 189 services across 17 moments that matter most to citizens. The National Digital and AI Strategy, published in February 2026, extends this further, with a new AI Advisory Unit, a National AI Fellowship, and a GovTech 2026 Challenge.

Much of the discussion focuses on delivery: governance, capability, infrastructure, funding. But another enabler deserves equal attention, and Ireland’s data suggests it may determine how far and how fast all the others can go: public trust, and the ongoing citizen engagement that builds it.
A foundation already being built well

Ireland’s starting position is genuinely strong. The OECD’s 2026 Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions, released via the CSO, found satisfaction with administrative services rose from 51 per cent in 2023 to 68 per cent in 2025, one of the more significant improvements recorded anywhere in the OECD.

Trust in the Irish civil service sits at 64 per cent, among the strongest performers in the OECD. The same survey found a consistent pattern: people who report more positive day-to-day experiences with government also report higher trust in national government overall.

That progress is not automatic. The same survey recorded a small decline in perceived fairness in benefit applications, from 74 to 72 per cent, and a modest fall in confidence that government uses evidence in decision-making, from 41 to 39 per cent. Trust moves in both directions depending on where citizens have a genuine stake in outcomes, reinforcing the case for treating engagement as something to be actively managed, not assumed.

Good service experience is closely associated with public trust, and Ireland’s improvement is not accidental: it reflects sustained investment in service quality, from the quality customer service tradition gathering direct citizen feedback since 1997, to the citizen-centred design principles now embedded in the Digital Public Services Plan.

The next opportunity

Set against this foundation, one figure stands out. Thirty per cent of people in Ireland say they are confident that government agencies will use AI appropriately. This is not evidence of scepticism toward government, since trust in Ireland’s institutions is already comparatively strong. It is evidence that trust in a specific, newer capability is still being earned, a genuinely encouraging position, because Ireland already knows how to earn it.

According to the CSO’s Digital Interactions with Public Services 2025 release, almost eight in 10 people now use electronic identification, such as MyGovID or Revenue’s myAccount, to securely access online services, achieved not through mandate but through service design citizens found trustworthy and well explained.

AI is a different kind of capability to a login credential, and the comparison should not be overstated: verifying identity is a narrow transaction, while AI-supported decisions can be less visible and higher in consequence, calling for a higher standard of transparency, not a lower one.

What transfers from MyGovID’s success is not the technology, but the discipline: clear communication about what a system does, genuine channels for feedback, and visible responsiveness when citizens raise concerns.

A lever for sustained success

The Digital Public Services Plan’s own governance already reflects this instinct: its life events working groups bring the people who use a service, not only the departments that provide it, into how each of the 17 life events is designed. As AI becomes more embedded in public services, the opportunity is to treat that same standard of engagement as a lever for sustained success, not a one-off step before launch.

Services digitised but not trusted tend to see slower adoption and continued demand for non-digital channels long after go-live; services built with ongoing citizen input tend to see the reverse.

For public sector leaders, the question is not whether citizens can be brought along on AI adoption. Ireland has already answered that, through MyGovID and its quality customer service tradition.

The question is whether that same standard of engagement is applied as deliberately to AI as it has been to service redesign, throughout a service’s life, not just at launch. In practice, that means resourcing engagement beyond a service’s design phase and treating early AI pilots as a chance to explain plainly and consistently what a system does and does not decide.

Looking ahead

Ireland’s digital and AI ambitions are well founded and already delivering measurable results for citizens, evident in the satisfaction figures, and in the trust the public services have earned. Ireland has already shown that citizens will engage with public services they trust; the task now is treating that same discipline as a core enabler for AI, planned for deliberately rather than assumed to follow once the technology is in place.

Fexco Advisory Services works with public and private sector organisations to design and deliver transformation programmes grounded in operational reality and focused on sustainable outcomes.

W: www.fexco.com/business-services/advisory-services/