Trust Me 2020
Mica Withington
The Covid-19 pandemic, with more than 1.9 million lives lost and joblessness equivalent to the Great Depression, has accelerated the erosion of trust around the world. This is evident in the significant drop in trust in the two largest economies: the U.S. and China. The U.S. (40 percent) and Chinese (30 percent) governments are deeply distrusted by respondents from the 26 other markets surveyed. And most notable is the drop in trust among their own citizens, with the U.S., already in the bottom quartile for trust, experiencing an additional 5-point drop since its presidential election in November 2020 and China seeing an 18-point drop since May 2020.
Not only have the expectations of business to lead been heightened, but we are also seeing new areas of focus that business must address; for example, the top trust-building action for business is now guarding information quality, ensuring that reliable trustworthy information goes out to their employees, and, by extension, the community. In fact, more than half of respondents (53 percent) believe that when the news media is absent, corporations have a responsibility to fill the information void.
Trust remains the most important currency in lasting relationships between the four institutions studied and their various stakeholders. Particularly in times of turbulence and volatility, trust is what holds society together and where growth rebuilds and rebounds. Every institution must play its part in restoring society and emerging from information bankruptcy:
A trust is formed under state law. You may wish to consult the law of the state in which the organization is organized. Note that for a trust to qualify under section 501(c)(3) of the Code, its organizing document must contain certain language. Publication 557 PDF contains suggested language.
By placing assets into an irrevocable trust, you give up control and ownership of them. This means they will not be considered part of your estate, which helps to minimize estate tax after you die and avoid the probate process.
The one establishing a trust is called the trustor or grantor. The one who oversees and manages the trust is called the trustee. In a revocable trust, the trustor may control the trust as well, but in an irrevocable trust, the trustee must be somebody else. The trust's beneficiaries are those who benefit from the trust, and the trustee ensures that the beneficiaries are paid.
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The Trust Principles were created in 1941, in the midst of World War II, in agreement with The Newspaper Proprietors Association Limited and The Press Association Limited (being the Reuters shareholders at that time). The Trust Principles imposed obligations on Reuters and its employees to act at all times with integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.
Reuters Directors and shareholders were determined to protect and preserve the Trust Principles when Reuters became a publicly traded company on the London Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. A unique structure was put in place to achieve this. A new company was formed and given the name 'Reuters Founders Share Company Limited', its purpose being to hold a 'Founders Share' in Reuters.
The legal structure has evolved over time and the Founders Share and other contractual arrangements now confer a number of special rights upon the Thomson Reuters Founders Share Company. For example, (i) the Thomson Reuters Founders Share Company has enhanced voting rights in circumstances where someone is seeking to obtain a significant shareholding in, or acquire control of, Thomson Reuters and (ii) the prior consent of the Thomson Reuters Founders Share Company must be sought prior to undertaking any sale of, or other material transaction involving, the Reuters news business unit.
Thomson Reuters itself is obliged and committed to apply the Trust Principles to its operations. The charter documents of Thomson Reuters Corporation include provisions to safeguard the Trust Principles as they apply to the Thomson Reuters business and require Thomson Reuters Directors, in the performance of their duties, to have due regard to the Trust Principles, by the proper exercise of their powers and in accordance with their other duties as Directors.
The number of Trustees has to be at least 14 and not more than 18. Trustees have a minimum of two meetings per year, and receive reports on our activities in the different fields in which we operate (including Reuters news). The Trustees meet with both the Thomson Reuters Board and representatives of senior management. Through Thomson Reuters Founders Share Company's Chairman, regular contact is maintained with our company. The relationship is one of trust and confidence.
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As information and communication technology has become pervasive in our society, we are increasingly dependent on both digital data and repositories that provide access to and enable the use of such resources. Repositories must earn the trust of the communities they intend to serve and demonstrate that they are reliable and capable of appropriately managing the data they hold.
Following a year-long public discussion and building on existing community consensus1, several stakeholders, representing various segments of the digital repository community, have collaboratively developed and endorsed a set of guiding principles to demonstrate digital repository trustworthiness. Transparency, Responsibility, User focus, Sustainability and Technology: the TRUST Principles provide a common framework to facilitate discussion and implementation of best practice in digital preservation by all stakeholders.
The FAIR Data Principles3 highlight the need to embrace good practice by defining essential characteristics of data objects to ensure that data are reusable by humans and machines: they should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable, i.e. FAIR. However, to make data FAIR whilst preserving them over time requires trustworthy digital repositories (TDRs) with sustainable governance and organizational frameworks, reliable infrastructure, and comprehensive policies supporting community-agreed practices. TDRs, with their clear remit to actively preserve data in response to changes in both technology and stakeholder requirements, play an important role in maintaining the value of data. They are held in a position of trust by their users as they accept the responsibilities of data stewardship. To fulfill this role, TDRs must demonstrate essential and enduring capabilities necessary to enable access and reuse of data over time for the communities they serve. TDRs support data curation and preservation of data holdings with different levels of reusability. In certain instances, lower-quality data, which cannot reasonably be improved or made more interoperable, may still retain high value to its user community and so require trustworthy stewardship. A TDR must identify and seek to meet community-accepted criteria and communicate the achieved level of data quality.
Trustworthiness is demonstrated through evidence, which depends on transparency, and thus repositories must provide transparent, honest, and verifiable evidence of their practice. In this way, stakeholders can be confident that repositories ensure data integrity, authenticity, accuracy, reliability, and accessibility over extended time frames. Trustworthiness is not a one-off achievement; it cannot be taken for granted without regular audit and certification.
Certification makes an objective and important contribution to the confidence of the various stakeholders of a repository. To assess and improve the quality of their professional practices, repositories rely on a range of international certification standards covering core, extended or formal level certification. These standards such as the CoreTrustSeal6, DIN31644/NESTOR7, and ISO163638 focus on four major assessment areas: organization, digital object management, technical infrastructure, and security risk management. The standards vary in the number and complexity of their requirements, with the intensity of assessments ranging from a peer review of a self-assessment to a more involved on-site visit by an external audit team. The choice of certification mechanism depends on the need, willingness, and ability of a repository to invest in its further professionalization and trustworthiness.
Repository managers and their teams are the primary audience for the existing OAIS reference model and trustworthiness certification mechanisms discussed above. In an Open Science context, however, we expect that a broader audience, including funders and repository users, will benefit from the framework encapsulated by the TRUST Principles, especially given the increasing attention given to scientific data stewardship (Box 1).
Clearly communicating repository policies and, in particular, the terms of use for data holdings, informs users about any limitations that may restrict their use of the data or the repository. Likewise, being able to easily assess whether a repository can handle sensitive data in a responsible manner would also inform their decision on whether to utilize the available data services.
Repository users should have confidence that data depositors are prompted to provide all metadata compliant with the community norms, as this greatly enhances the discoverability and usefulness of the data. Knowing that a repository verifies the integrity of available data and metadata assures potential users that the data holdings are more likely to be interoperable with other relevant datasets. Both depositors and users must have confidence that the data will remain accessible over time, and thus can be cited and referenced in scholarly publications.
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