Why fragmented systems harm public trust

Most systems aren’t broken. They’re disconnected on purpose. Housing, health, education, and justice are deeply connected. Yet our structures are designed to separate them, each with its own data, timelines, and definitions of success. This is how disconnection becomes policy. It’s how communities carry the weight of fractured systems. In Indigenous Systems Thinking, nothing stands alone. Every decision carries a ripple. Every structure reflects relationship. Interdependence is not theory. It’s a design requirement. When systems move together: • Care becomes coherent • Responsibility is shared • Data flows with consent • Budgets follow relationships • Staff are supported by structure, not stretched across gaps Alignment isn’t a preference. It’s how we build systems that reflect how people actually live. If your system isolates data, staff, or responsibility, it doesn’t just reduce efficiency. It erodes trust.

Governance gaps arise when laws, institutions, or oversight fail to keep pace with fast-moving realities. They delay progress, erode accountability, and weaken public trust—especially in health. Today’s health frontiers—AI in diagnostics, mobile health apps, genomic medicine, climate-driven migration, and FemTech—are advancing rapidly, but governance is often outdated, fragmented, or missing entirely. Public-private partnerships lack transparency, cybersecurity in health systems is fragile, and displaced populations face care barriers. We need to map under-governed spaces, build smarter, rights-based governance, ensure inclusive participation, and enable global cooperation. Governance is not a bureaucratic side issue—it’s a public health imperative. Under-governed spaces are not inevitable. They’re governance failures waiting to be fixed. #GovernanceRx | #HealthGovernance | #PublicPolicy | #DigitalHealth | #WomensHealth | #AI | #FutureOfHealth | #Leadership | #UHC

When I was teaching infodemic management at the WHO during the pandemic, we asked the CDC colleagues to discuss five communication failures that consistently derail public health efforts: - Mixed messages from multiple experts - Information released too late - Paternalistic messaging - Failing to counter rumors in real-time - Public-facing power struggles and confusion   In the US, all five are now happening at once.   Public trust in health institutions is unraveling. People are adapting by building decentralized, multi-source, often crowdsourced “trust ecosystems.”   This is what the New York Times comment section revealed after a recent article recommended credible health information sources. The comments were not fringe. They reflected skepticism, discernment, and a shift toward self-curated information strategies.   Readers reported: - Turning to Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Wikipedia, and NHS UK over US government sites. - Avoiding .gov domains due to perceived politicization. - Using AI cautiously, as a first filter, not a final word. - Proposing solutions like health site trust ratings, simplified printouts, and community-led education.   Public health needs to meet this moment. Not by restoring the old systems, but by fostering something new for health information search, access and use: - Transparent, independent curation - Tools for triangulation and critical analysis - Localized, multilingual resource hubs - Responsible AI-supported health navigation - Community-led health literacy models   Each of these comes with ethical, practical, and equity challenges.   We need to think big picture and hyper-local at the same time.   I don’t have all the answers. But I believe we need to build—together—a health information ecosystem for a fragmented, fractal, globalized, and crisis-prone world.

What if America’s race to lead in AI leaves its own systems fragmented, opaque, and globally out of sync? John Bailey highlights how the Trump administration’s AI Action Plan could reshape U.S. technological leadership, especially through deregulation and private-sector growth. He supports the ambition but warns the plan’s gaps in interpretability, legal clarity, and execution could erode public trust. This push could boost innovation but risks undermining national coordination. Tying federal AI funds to state policies may fracture the regulatory landscape, weakening coherence and slowing unified responses to cross-border risks. Instead of coercion, national frameworks should align with decentralized innovation. Legal uncertainty is another flashpoint. Without guidance on copyright, startups may face inconsistent rulings and steep compliance costs, favoring incumbents and hurting competitiveness as the EU and China define clearer AI norms. Interpretability remains core to trust, yet the plan lacks direction on converting research into policy. Public-private benchmarks for transparency, auditability, or explainability could ensure this work becomes actionable, not just academic. The current framing also risks reinforcing monopolies. Accelerated deployment without parallel investment in open-source models, nonprofit R&D, or procurement diversity could entrench dominant players, undermining innovation and resilience. Globally, unilateral action could fragment the AI ecosystem. As other nations codify AI rights and safeguards, U.S. disengagement from global coordination may spark friction in trade, interoperability, and influence. Beyond safety, broader social risks need attention. Labor displacement, bias, and surveillance harms already affect vulnerable groups. Leadership must include ethical foresight and public legitimacy. Use of AI in healthcare, policing, and benefits also demands safeguards to ensure civic trust. Not least among its gaps, the plan lacks a workforce strategy. Without national reskilling and digital education, AI benefits may remain concentrated in select regions, worsening inequality. Equitable innovation needs social infrastructure. AI leadership isn’t just about speed or supremacy, it’s about shaping systems that are inclusive, accountable, and globally sustainable. In the race to lead, governance must not be an afterthought, it must be the architecture. #geopolitics #ai #governance #innovation #regulation #technology #ethics #digitalpolicy American Enterprise Institute @John Bailey

Digital Public Infrastructure without Trust is just Bureaucracy In Brussels, in Lisbon, in every European capital, one term is gaining momentum. Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). The idea is simple: shared digital rails that allow governments, institutions, and citizens to interact seamlessly. Identity. Payments. Data exchange. But there is a fundamental blind spot: Without trust, DPI is just another layer of bureaucracy. Nowhere is this clearer than in real estate: Data is fragmented across agencies, brokers, and public offices. Housing represents one of the largest assets of European families. Transactions depend on unverifiable or sometimes manipulated data. Citizens are asked to trust a process that is slow, opaque, and vulnerable to error. This is not sustainable. And it cannot serve as the foundation of Europe’s digital future. That’s why we are creating the Trust Layer. The convergence of AI(performance and Blockchain(Trust and Tokenimics) AI → collective intelligence that learns, predicts, and decides. Tokenomics → incentives and governance that align thousands of distributed actors. Because if families cannot trust the information behind the most important asset of their lives. Their home. How can they be expected to trust Europe’s digital future? The Trust Layer introduces a new standard designed to: Verify the authenticity of every piece of information in a transaction. Guarantee its integrity and accountability across the system. Return liquidity of data to those who generate it: agents, brokers, and citizens. Now imagine this: When you buy a house, every document — ownership, energy certificate, registry, carries a verified seal of trust. No disputes. No hidden risks. No uncertainty. That is what trust looks like in practice. And that is what DPI needs if it is to become more than a political slogan. The Trust Layer is real estate infrastructure, guaranteeing trust, reputation, and data liquidity. And if Europe wants DPI to deliver on its promise of inclusion, transparency, and resilience, it must embed trust at the core of housing and property markets. Because housing is not just a market. It is the backbone of our societies. And societies cannot thrive on broken trust. --- My name is Tiago Dias, founder of Unlockit, and I hope you take time to read this document from Cambridge University. It explores the hard questions policymakers must now face: - Which institutional models are best suited for governing DPI? - How can policymakers navigate trade-offs between innovation and risk in fast-changing environments? - What collaborative mechanisms can align standards and safeguards across borders? These questions are not theoretical. They echo across current European Union initiatives — from European Digital Identity - eIDAS 2.0, to European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI), to the AI Act. All of them point to one conclusion. Trust is the real infrastructure Europe must get right. #Trust