How Trust in People Is Being Replaced by Trust in Systems
Institutions of power spend decades earning citizens' trust. Trust is one of the pillars on which the state exists as an entity. Relations with people have always been formed by specific individuals — officials endowed with various forms of authority. The historically established anthropomorphism of the state’s collective image is currently undergoing transformation, of course, digital in nature, as is fitting for the 21st century. And traditional institutions now face a challenge that is entirely unprecedented and has no historical solution: to preserve hard-won trust, but in relation to a soulless digital showcase.
Institutions of power spend decades earning citizens' trust. Trust is one of the pillars on which the state exists as an entity. Relations with people have always been formed by specific individuals — officials endowed with various forms of authority. The historically established anthropomorphism of the state’s collective image is currently undergoing transformation, of course, digital in nature, as is fitting for the 21st century. And traditional institutions now face a challenge that is entirely unprecedented and has no historical solution: to preserve hard-won trust, but in relation to a soulless digital showcase.
A Human-Centred Interface
Society stands on the threshold of an anthropological revolution. The state has genuinely acquired a digital face — not in the form of another governor’s Telegram channel, but as an ensemble of platforms: 'Gosuslugi' (Russia's unified state services portal, through which citizens access virtually all government services online), a unified biometric system, a national messenger, and others. The depth of digitalisation in these relationships will only increase: from 1 September 2025 the Law on the Unified Digital Ecosystem came into force, requiring the transfer of all socially significant services to digital platforms by 2030.
Throughout all of human history, trust in authority has been built through the personal example, deeds, and words of specific individuals. Take the history of contemporary Russia: most of the population sees the guarantor of stability not in the institution of the presidency as such, but in the particular person who occupies that post at a given historical moment.
Mistakes have always been personalised: 'Ivanov took a bribe', 'Petrov was rude', 'Sidorova was sacked for red tape'. Voters vote for specific individuals, even ifthey represent a collective image — a party.
How to personalisea new format of communication is not yet clear. A bot denied you a benefit. The system lost your application. Who is to blame? Who do you complain to? Who do you vote against? The meme 'Chubais is to blame for everything' (a reference to Anatoly Chubais, the architect of Russia’s 1990s privatisation, who became the scapegoat for the economic hardships of the decade — his name was synonymous with collective grievance for an entire generation) urgently needs a modern, digital update.
Responsible for Everything
The accountability vacuum that is forming is the principal hidden risk of the digital state. When a face becomes a screen, a citizen loses the familiar feedback mechanism. He can no longer make a scene at the department head’s office. He can only write to technical support, where he will be answered by another bot or, at best, a call-centre operator who decides nothing but merely relays scripted responses — making himnot much different from a chatbot. If the trust credit is high, trust does not disappear but shifts from specific individuals to an abstract system or job title. Trust in an abstraction is inherently fragile, however: it collapses at the first systemic failure.
Beyond that, trust in a digital counterparty — whether it is a government service or a marketplace platform — is an entity not yet fully formed in society. As the latest measurement of the VTSIOM (the All-Russian Centre for the Study of Public Opinion — Russia’s main state polling organisation) Digital Phobia Index showed in February, society is in a phase of 'moderate digital phobia': risks associated with interaction in the new environment are assessed as quite probable, but not catastrophic.
Analysts have recorded a clear shift: if previously people feared that a digital official might 'crash' or 'lose documents', now the fears have become more existential. Survey respondents admitted that what they fear most is leakage of personal data (or rather, its possible consequences), loss of cognitive control and decline in their own intelligence as a result of generative AI, and technical helplessness in case 'something goes wrong' during their interaction with digital services.
There is a clear trust paradox: the platform is trusted as a procedural executor but not as a keeper of secrets. Unlike a human official, whom you can ask 'and who did you show my passport to?', such a question cannot be posed to an interface.
It would seem that with such fears public opinion should demand the return of human officials. But no. The share of those who see no danger in digitalisation at all, according to the same survey, has grown to 42.6 percent. Moreover, 61.5 percent of Russians consider technology useful rather than dangerous.
We may be witnessing the birth of a new type of relationship — procedural trust. F21st-century person trusts not a personality but a mathematical guarantee that their request will be processed by a single algorithm. As a survey showed, the share of citizens who prefer a digital appointment via the portal over a live reception at an MFC (MultifunktsionalnyTsentr — the Multi-Functional Centre network, Russia’s system of one-stop government service shops where citizens can obtain documents and services in person) has already exceeded 70 percent.
Yet at the same time, estrangement from the personal responsibility of officials is growing. The citizen is ceasing to identify 'the state' with any particular Ivanov or Petrova. For them, the state is 'Gosuslugi', 'My Tax', mos.ru, and so on. If these systems work, they feel loyalty toward the authorities as an engineering project. If they do not — their anger is directed not at a minister but at 'IT specialists' and 'programmers'.
What does this mean for the political system? Politicians are ceasing to be the 'face of the state' in everyday services. Their faces are preserved only for ceremonial roles — speeches, parades, ribbon-cuttings at new schools. For the ordinary person, the 'face' of authority is now a green tick, a loadingbar, and the word 'Approved'. Can such a 'face' be trusted? It can, as long as the buttons work. But trust based solely on functionality disappears instantly. Unlike trust in a human official, whom you know by face and sometimes forgive mistakes — because he is familiar, comprehensible, and his actions speak for him.
A wise state — and I want to believe it truly is— must understand: a complete replacement of a person with an interface is fatal for trust. Windows of live human interaction are needed wherever an algorithm is powerless. Transparency about mistakes is needed — it must be clear who is specifically responsible for fixing them. And above all, the visible deeds of decision-makers must be preserved. Without this, digital efficiency will turn into emptiness: we will end up with a perfectly functioning but entirely alien bureaucratic machine.
Society stands on the threshold of an anthropological revolution. The state has genuinely acquired a digital face — not in the form of another governor’s Telegram channel, but as an ensemble of platforms: 'Gosuslugi' (Russia's unified state services portal, through which citizens access virtually all government services online), a unified biometric system, a national messenger, and others. The depth of digitalisation in these relationships will only increase: from 1 September 2025 the Law on the Unified Digital Ecosystem came into force, requiring the transfer of all socially significant services to digital platforms by 2030.
Throughout all of human history, trust in authority has been built through the personal example, deeds, and words of specific individuals. Take the history of contemporary Russia: most of the population sees the guarantor of stability not in the institution of the presidency as such, but in the particular person who occupies that post at a given historical moment.
Mistakes have always been personalised: 'Ivanov took a bribe', 'Petrov was rude', 'Sidorova was sacked for red tape'. Voters vote for specific individuals, even ifthey represent a collective image — a party.
How to personalisea new format of communication is not yet clear. A bot denied you a benefit. The system lost your application. Who is to blame? Who do you complain to? Who do you vote against? The meme 'Chubais is to blame for everything' (a reference to Anatoly Chubais, the architect of Russia’s 1990s privatisation, who became the scapegoat for the economic hardships of the decade — his name was synonymous with collective grievance for an entire generation) urgently needs a modern, digital update.
Responsible for Everything
The accountability vacuum that is forming is the principal hidden risk of the digital state. When a face becomes a screen, a citizen loses the familiar feedback mechanism. He can no longer make a scene at the department head’s office. He can only write to technical support, where he will be answered by another bot or, at best, a call-centre operator who decides nothing but merely relays scripted responses — making himnot much different from a chatbot. If the trust credit is high, trust does not disappear but shifts from specific individuals to an abstract system or job title. Trust in an abstraction is inherently fragile, however: it collapses at the first systemic failure.
Beyond that, trust in a digital counterparty — whether it is a government service or a marketplace platform — is an entity not yet fully formed in society. As the latest measurement of the VTSIOM (the All-Russian Centre for the Study of Public Opinion — Russia’s main state polling organisation) Digital Phobia Index showed in February, society is in a phase of 'moderate digital phobia': risks associated with interaction in the new environment are assessed as quite probable, but not catastrophic.
Analysts have recorded a clear shift: if previously people feared that a digital official might 'crash' or 'lose documents', now the fears have become more existential. Survey respondents admitted that what they fear most is leakage of personal data (or rather, its possible consequences), loss of cognitive control and decline in their own intelligence as a result of generative AI, and technical helplessness in case 'something goes wrong' during their interaction with digital services.
There is a clear trust paradox: the platform is trusted as a procedural executor but not as a keeper of secrets. Unlike a human official, whom you can ask 'and who did you show my passport to?', such a question cannot be posed to an interface.
It would seem that with such fears public opinion should demand the return of human officials. But no. The share of those who see no danger in digitalisation at all, according to the same survey, has grown to 42.6 percent. Moreover, 61.5 percent of Russians consider technology useful rather than dangerous.
We may be witnessing the birth of a new type of relationship — procedural trust. F21st-century person trusts not a personality but a mathematical guarantee that their request will be processed by a single algorithm. As a survey showed, the share of citizens who prefer a digital appointment via the portal over a live reception at an MFC (MultifunktsionalnyTsentr — the Multi-Functional Centre network, Russia’s system of one-stop government service shops where citizens can obtain documents and services in person) has already exceeded 70 percent.
Yet at the same time, estrangement from the personal responsibility of officials is growing. The citizen is ceasing to identify 'the state' with any particular Ivanov or Petrova. For them, the state is 'Gosuslugi', 'My Tax', mos.ru, and so on. If these systems work, they feel loyalty toward the authorities as an engineering project. If they do not — their anger is directed not at a minister but at 'IT specialists' and 'programmers'.
What does this mean for the political system? Politicians are ceasing to be the 'face of the state' in everyday services. Their faces are preserved only for ceremonial roles — speeches, parades, ribbon-cuttings at new schools. For the ordinary person, the 'face' of authority is now a green tick, a loadingbar, and the word 'Approved'. Can such a 'face' be trusted? It can, as long as the buttons work. But trust based solely on functionality disappears instantly. Unlike trust in a human official, whom you know by face and sometimes forgive mistakes — because he is familiar, comprehensible, and his actions speak for him.
A wise state — and I want to believe it truly is— must understand: a complete replacement of a person with an interface is fatal for trust. Windows of live human interaction are needed wherever an algorithm is powerless. Transparency about mistakes is needed — it must be clear who is specifically responsible for fixing them. And above all, the visible deeds of decision-makers must be preserved. Without this, digital efficiency will turn into emptiness: we will end up with a perfectly functioning but entirely alien bureaucratic machine.