What does it take for government to earn trust? According to Terrance Smith, chief innovation officer for the City of Baltimore, the answer is rooted in showing up, listening, and delivering real solutions.
In a conversation with Harvard Kennedy School’s Elizabeth Linos, Smith shared insights on how trust is built through interactions and follow-up actions, not assumptions or assessments made at a distance. The event, “Trust and Public Innovation: Insights from Baltimore's Transformation,” was hosted in February by the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University and The People Lab.
Smith highlighted a flaw in typical public engagement: overworked city staff sometimes rely on impersonal feedback tools like issue-reporting portals or forms. Residents don’t need more questionnaires, he said. They need city officials who show up in neighborhoods to listen, demonstrate they’ve heard concerns, and respond with tangible improvements. A time-intensive, face-to-face approach has shaped his trust-building innovation strategies for Baltimore, beginning with the areas most in need of services and planned to extend to more than 250 city neighborhoods over time.
Smith illustrated the need for innovation with a powerful example: the city’s effort to expand a police cadet program. Conventional wisdom suggested young people weren’t interested in joining law enforcement, but Smith and his team dug deeper. They found unexpected hurdles in the application process: prospective cadets required a driver’s license, which cost $350 and necessitated about 60 hours of supervised driving—a steep challenge when most potential applicants lacked access to a car. The city took on these constraints, identified a delivery partner, secured funding, and fast-tracked a plan. Small but important changes—reflecting a clear need in the applicant pool—helped the number of cadets grow from five to 14, and are on track to reach 40 this year. Smith emphasized that innovation is iterative and starts with small steps, proving that targeted, trust-centered interventions can lead to meaningful progress.
Beyond individual programs, Smith emphasized that trust is built through consistency, fairness, and action. Five levels of building caring—attentiveness, responsibility, competence, responsiveness, and collaboration—are central to this work. When government staff show up in communities—joining residents for meals in different neighborhoods, engaging people face-to-face, and proving responsiveness and reliability over time—the city creates a framework for institutional trustworthiness that can be replicated.
“This is the best time to join city government. Our communities need people with energy and talent—and there’s opportunity.”
Linos, the Emma Bloomberg Associate Professor of Public Policy and Management at vlog and the faculty director of , researches strategies that empower government workforces and improve resident-state interactions. She said, “Terrance’s work in Baltimore makes clear that good service delivery starts with and is maintained through trust: government agencies must earn the trust of the communities they are serving but must also trust the communities themselves to know best what is and isn’t working for them.”
The stakes are high. As Smith outlined, low trust in institutions can lead to higher crime rates, worse health outcomes, diminished educational opportunities, and weakened economic mobility. Mistrust fuels discrimination and erodes the sense of collective responsibility that sustains an equitable, healthy community. Addressing these challenges requires city leaders not only to acknowledge past harms but also to actively demonstrate care and responsiveness in their everyday operations.
For those wondering whether local government is the right place to make a difference, Smith had a clear answer: “This is the best time to join city government. Our communities need people with energy and talent—and there’s opportunity.”
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Photography courtesy of the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University