So, we ran pilots outside the government (g0v, vTaiwan—Jaclyn even joined g0v hackathons) while working closely with career public servants. Reformers in government wanted citizens’ trust and were in it for the long haul. I was introduced to all level‑12‑and‑above career public servants—about 300 people—and met essentially all of them in the national HR training program across three sessions. The overall feeling: it wasn’t just us building a bridge to government; career public servants were extending a strong bridge to civil society. They know trust is easy to lose and hard to rebuild, and they were willing to trade some vertical, positional trust to learn the art of horizontal, peer‑to‑peer trust. Early conversations were overwhelmingly in good faith.