The Future of Public Information
Why understanding the future starts by understanding how we got here.
The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer revealed a striking observation. “Today we find a lack of belief in facts and the rise of disinformation.” Richard Edelman builds on that observation with another compelling idea. Institutions increasingly need to become Trust Brokers: organisations that help people navigate complexity, build understanding and strengthen trust.
I believe both observations are important. They describe many of the challenges we are experiencing today. Trust in institutions is under pressure. AI is making it easier than ever to create and distribute content. Misinformation is becoming more sophisticated, more convincing and more difficult to distinguish from reality.
These are real challenges. At the same time, they invite another question.
How did we get here?
Because if we understand how the way information travels has changed, we are much better equipped to decide what needs to change next. Every generation changes the way information moves:
- The printing press made knowledge accessible to millions instead of a privileged few.
- Radio brought voices into people’s homes.
- Television allowed us to witness events as they unfolded.
- The internet made information instantly available from almost anywhere in the world.
None of these developments reduced the importance of information. Each fundamentally changed how people discovered it.
Today we are experiencing another shift. Not simply because AI has arrived. But because the journey between the original source and the person consuming information has fundamentally changed.Information no longer travels in a straight line. It moves through search engines, social media, messaging apps, video platforms, AI-generated answers, screenshots, forwarded messages, short clips and summaries created by others. By the time information reaches us, it may already have been shortened, interpreted or taken out of its original context.
The Reuters Institute has documented this shift for years. Its Digital News Report shows that people increasingly discover information through social platforms, video and online aggregators rather than by going directly to the original publisher. At the same time, younger generations have grown up consuming information in fundamentally different ways than the generations before them.
Public information is not exempt from that change. It is part of it. Yet much of today’s public information is still organised for a world where people were expected to come to the institution, read the report, watch the meeting or download the document.
People haven’t stopped looking for trustworthy information. They’ve changed where and how they look for it. That changes the challenge for every public organisation. The conversation about trust often begins with misinformation. And rightly so. The rise of AI-generated content, manipulated images, fabricated articles and convincing deepfakes deserves serious attention.
But misinformation is not the only thing that has changed. Something happened before misinformation became today’s headline. The way information travelled changed. As information moves through more systems, more platforms and more interpretations, something becomes increasingly difficult to preserve.
Context
A summary makes choices.
A headline highlights one perspective.
A short clip removes everything that happened before and after.
An AI-generated answer depends entirely on the information it had available at the moment it was created.
None of these are inherently wrong. In fact, they often make information significantly more accessible. But every additional layer creates another opportunity for context to become harder to preserve. And context matters. Not because people cannot think for themselves. But because critical thinking depends on having enough information to form your own judgement.
It requires seeing more than a conclusion. It requires understanding how that conclusion was reached. As context becomes easier to lose, critical thinking becomes harder to apply. And when critical thinking becomes harder, trust inevitably comes under pressure. Perhaps that is one of the defining information challenges of our time. Not simply misinformation. But preserving enough context for people to make informed decisions for themselves.
The question, then, is no longer whether public organisations should publish information. They already do.The real question is whether they are publishing it in a way that reflects how people actually consume information today. For decades, documents have been the natural end product of public decision-making;
- Minutes are published.
- Reports are archived.
- Decisions are documented.
That remains essential. Documents create accountability. They create records. They create history. But they rarely tell the complete story. Meaning is not only found in words. It is found in the discussion that came before the decision. In the questions that challenged an assumption. In the hesitation before an answer. In tone of voice. In facial expressions. In the interaction between people.
A transcript tells us what was said. A recording also shows us how it was said. Neither replaces the other. Together, they create context. Perhaps that is why the future of public information is not document-first. Nor is it video-first. It is source-first.
The original source becomes the foundation from which different audiences consume information in different ways. Some people will read the minutes. Others will search the transcript. Some will watch the recording. Others will ask an AI assistant to explain the discussion in plain language. None of those experiences are wrong. As long as they continue to lead back to the same source. That is an important distinction.
Because the objective should not be to control information. The objective should be to preserve context while making information easier to access. Public organisations should not publish information simply because regulations require them to. They should publish to remain the trusted reference point. That changes how information should be organised.
Today, many organisations still operate with fragmented information landscapes.
- The agenda lives in one system.
- The recording in another.
- The transcript somewhere else.
- The minutes become a PDF.
- The public conversation takes place on social media.
Each individual piece may be correct. Yet together they no longer represent a complete picture.
The challenge is no longer publishing information.
The challenge is connecting information.
That means creating one trusted destination where the original conversation, supporting documents, decisions, recordings and context come together. Not because every stakeholder will consume every piece of information. They won’t. But because everyone should be able to return to the original source whenever they choose.
There is an interesting parallel with the way we learned to recognise secure websites. For a while, few people thought about the difference between HTTP and HTTPS. Today, most of us instinctively recognise the difference. A missing “S”; immediately raises questions. We have learned that trust begins before we interact with a website. It starts by knowing we are in the right place.
I believe the same shift will happen with public information. Citizens should not have to wonder whether the meeting they are watching, the transcript they are reading or the clip they are sharing came from the original source. They should instinctively know where to find it. On the organisation’s own trusted domain. No unnecessary redirects. No fragmented platforms. No confusing routes to the source.
Because trust begins long before someone presses play. It begins with knowing you’ve arrived at the right place. That is why the original source becomes increasingly valuable. Not as the only way people consume information, but as the foundation from which every other experience is built.
Some people will watch the meeting.
Others will read the transcript.
Some will search for a specific topic.
Others will ask an AI assistant to explain what happened.
All of those experiences have value.
As long as they continue to lead back to the same source.
That is where AI becomes incredibly powerful. Not as a replacement for the source, but as an access layer. AI can search, translate, summarise, compare and navigate information in ways that were unimaginable only a few years ago. It has the potential to make public information dramatically more accessible.
But AI becomes more valuable as the quality of the underlying source improves. The stronger the source, the stronger the answer. The richer the context, the more valuable the insight. Only then does the conversation naturally shift towards future-proofing that source.
How do we preserve authenticity as information is shared across platforms?
How do we prove where digital content originated?
How do we ensure that future generations can distinguish an original public record from a manipulated copy?
That is where technologies such as Media Provenance become increasingly relevant. Not as the foundation. But as the next logical layer. After all, verifying the authenticity of information only creates value if people are actually using the original source in the first place.
Looking ahead, I believe every public organisation should start by asking three simple questions.
- Where is our original source of truth?
- How easy is it for people to return to that source?
- And are we preparing that source for the future?
For many organisations, that journey will naturally evolve in three stages.
First, create a single source of truth.Not another platform, but a clear information strategy. Know where information originates, who owns it and how different systems contribute to one complete picture.
Second, become the trusted reference point. Don’t publish simply to meet an obligation. Publish so that citizens, journalists, employees and AI systems alike can always return to the original source when context matters.
Finally, strengthen that foundation with source verification. Not because technology is the goal. But because authenticity becomes increasingly valuable once people know where to find the source in the first place.
Technology will continue to evolve.
AI will continue to evolve.
The way people consume information will continue to evolve.
The original source remains the constant.
Perhaps the future of public information is not about creating more information. Perhaps it is about making the original source easier to find, easier to understand and easier to trust.
Because trust is never created by technology alone. It is earned by institutions. Strengthened by transparency. Protected by context. And made possible when people can always return to the place where the conversation began.
