‘As a government official, you are one of those knobs to turn’, according to researcher Mathilde Witkam
We spoke with Mathilde Witkam about her research as a dual PhD candidate at the Dual PhD Centre. Her dissertation is about the effect of open government on public trust. Mathilde: ‘Trust in government ensures that people are more honest in their tax returns; less control saves time and money.’
Your research is about trust in municipalities, how do you measure it?
Public trust is about how people perceive the integrity, benevolence and competence of the government. But there is no 'one government'. Trust in the police may be different from trust in the judiciary, politicians, a mayor or municipal officials. I have studied the effect of openness in municipalities. Part of municipal taxes are levied based on the value of your owner-occupied home: the property value (in Dutch: WOZ value). If the property value is higher, you pay more tax. You may experience that the value has been overestimated by the municipality and that you therefore pay too much tax. If you disagree, you can lodge an objection.
And what if someone files an objection?
One of my three sub-studies deals with the experiences and confidence of objectors. Notable differences emerge between the formal written procedure and the more informal oral procedure. In written procedures, people are more likely to feel that complex legal and structural arguments are required. If ‘formal objectors’ are positive about both the outcome (do I get vindicated?) and the procedure (do I feel heard?), their confidence remains at best the same. But in telephone settlement, confidence did sometimes increase if both were perceived as positive. In informal procedures, people are more likely to feel heard. Feeling properly treated ensures that trust does not decrease, even when you are not vindicated. You can do something with this as a government, for instance by making informal contact more accessible or by making contact in the written objection procedure more personal. And individual officials can positively influence trust, one step at a time, one conversation at a time.
Proving right
As a government, you cannot prove everyone right. Especially in those cases, it is important to explain carefully why a decision is the way it is. Which results into people who are more willing to pay taxes and thus contribute to society. What emerges is that for both types of objection and expectation in the future (trust) is strongly related to satisfaction with the contact, so there lies an opportunity to act upon.
What is the source of this trust in the government?
Many factors come into play which a government cannot influence, but I was interested in what they cán do. Therefore I looked at the degree of openness, such as proactive communication. I also took into regard the responding to questions, accessibility, decision making based on people's personal data and the accessibility of objection procedures. There appeared to be no strong link between these forms of municipal openness and residents' trust. The idea that if the government is transparent that immediately promotes trust, is not necessarily the case. Because many efforts for openness do not reach the target group(s). Trust is formed through perception and therefore transparency can only influence perception if the message is conveyed.
How does that apply to people who have little trust in the municipality?
People who have little trust in the government also appreciate personal contact. Even people with very little trust name positive experiences with individual government officials. These individuals give a face or a voice to that same government, which takes away the idea of the 'anonymous' government.
Pride
It does not matter how long you live in a municipality, as trust does not necessarily build over time. Respondents do mention the warmth they feel for their city. A nice living environment contributes to that positive image of a local government. Actually, trust comes with personal, concrete experiences as a resident. It's about whether the things you find important are well taken care of.
Where do you see opportunities for other researchers?
This thesis is neither the beginning, nor the end, to the causes of trust in government. Within the research for an open government, I was looking for knobs to turn for the government to promote trust. But there are no such knobs, no tools nor chatbots. Actually, as a government official you are actually one of those knobs yourself. There are opportunities for trust in the way we communicate with residents, which include looking at digital and language skills. Direct contact with residents has the potential to increase trust among residents, thus additional research is needed.
There are indications that trust works back and forth. It may also be that major events in a resident's life determines trust, like the death of a loved one or moving to another municipality. The question that derives is: how can transparency be made meaningful and ‘ineffective transparency’ limited? As we live in an information society, where complex structures and decision-making are key, actively keeping the public engaged is imperative. Therefore, the government as well as science have plenty to do in the next few years.
Can you tell us more about your book?
The English thesis contains the full research; the Dutch (public) version is shorter and context-wise more accessible to a broad audience. I designed the illustration by myself, initially. I believed it would be nice to have a white cover with only one red line on it: trust as a red thread. But if you look more closely, you can also see the outline of The Hague (as a symbol of the Dutch government) as well as an ECG line. So you can see trust is 'the beating heart' of public administration.