The narrative around “data-sharing” in government needs resetting. It is too often short-hand for the unaccountable duplication and joining together of data to meet short-term policy needs or reduce costs. Policymakers need to answer the following question: as more data is used to deliver more services, what will it do to people’s mental model of government and will it be one that people trust?

Governments around the world are digitizing more of their services. The result is that the way people experience public services is increasingly through an app or a website. The hope is that this leads to a better experience for citizens while saving money in the process, but it carries with it an additional effect: as otherwise abstract government policies manifest themselves as pixels on citizen’s phones, small design choices can have big impacts on how people access and understand services.