the authorities, in the integrity of the authorities, and in the benevolence of the authorities. The trust perceptions categories that emerged from our
grounded analysis were compared with similar constructs found in trust
models and taxonomies from the trust literature and this strengthens the
view of these emerging themes as generic types of trust perceptions. Draw-
ing on this literature further provided for a reconceptualization of the
grounded categories in terms of trustworthiness attributes, particularly so
in the case of benevolence.
While fi
findings in all three categories reiterate the negative perceptions
of citizen, suggesting an overall lack of trust in public authority, differences
were observed when measured by the frequency of statements made with
respect to each attribute. This is shown in Table 9.2.
Identifying Online Citizens 115
Table 9.2 Trustworthiness Attributes in Rank Order
Proportion of statements
Rank
Trustworthiness attribute
referring to each attribute (%)
1
Benevolence
70
2
Integrity
55
3
Competence
20
Table 9.2 indicates the proportion of responses pertaining to each of the three trustworthiness attributes of competence, integrity, and benevolence.
The majority of the statements were coded within the benevolence category
(70 percent). Integrity-related statements counted for 55 percent, and the
least frequent category was competence, under which 20 percent of the
statements were coded.
Moving beyond the generic typology however, the fi
findings direct atten-
tion to specifi
fic trust-related issues associated with public sector IdMS,
which are summarised in Table 9.3.
The competence theme points to perceived inability to operate securely
a mission-critical system that stores sensitive personal data. The key issue
represented by integrity was the use of personal information for purposes
not originally declared and the passing of personal information to third
Table 9.3 Summary of Trust Perceptions Related to eID
Trust perception
categories
ID-related issues
Justificat
fi
ions
Competence
Inability to operate
Records of IT failures
Extent to which public
securely a mission-critical
in public sector
institutions will
system that is storing and
demonstrate ability
managing large amounts
to do what the
of sensitive personal data
citizens need
Integrity
Passing personal
Mission creep cases
Extent to which public
information to third
(autobahn toll collect
institutions will
parties
data, passenger data)
demonstrate honesty in
handling personal
information of citizens
Benevolence
Use of personal data as a
Political history
Extent to which public
means of overly intrusive
(abuse of personal
institutions will act
surveillance
information in
in the citizens’ best
totalitarian regimes,
interests
mainly Nazi Germany)
116 Ruth Halperin and James Backhouse
party without approval. Judgment of government motives, whether benevo-
lent or not, focused on the use of personal data for intrusive surveillance.
A pattern apparent in the fi
findings concerns the way in which respon-
dents rely on their knowledge and interpretation of prior events as a way of
justifying and substantiating their perceptions. In the case of competence,
the past record of IT failures in public sector was repeatedly mentioned.
Lack of trust in the integrity of the government was explained by reference
to past examples of mission creep. Finally, abuse of personal information
by totalitarian regimes in the past was seen to lay the ground for similar
behaviour in the future, should the opportunity arise.
Before considering some of the implications arising from our study, we
draw attention to the evident similarity between fi
findings in the United
Kingdom and Germany. National diff
fferences in the data and analysis were
marginal and very few were detected. As the analysis scaled up through the
process of grouping higher-level categories into broader themes (Urquhart,
Lehmann, & Myers, 2010), the national differences between the United
Kingdom and Germany appeared even less significant, such that the refined
analytical framework consistently represented both countries.
5 IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSION
A crucial issue raised by our research is the citizens’ low trust in govern-
ments responsible for personal data. Seltsikas and O’Keefe (2010) explore
the role of trust in the context identity management systems and eID, and
fi
find that government stakeholders believe that IdMS can be used to shore
up the shortfall of trust. By contrast, our study fi
finds that the technology
adds to the risks they face.
Avgerou and Ganzaroli (2009) fi
find that there are common assumptions
in respect of developing countries about the potential of e-government to
restore trust in government institutions. However in their study in Brazil,
the researchers discover that the production of trust in government services
mediated by information and communication technology depends on citi-
zens’ perceptions: the e-voting system is believed to be trustworthy only as
long as the public authority responsible is seen not to be abusing its power.
The problem centers on the institutions and not the technology. However
Lippert and Ojumu (2008) in a study on e-voting fi
find that innovators and
early adopters are more likely to trust the technology and expressed an
intention in this case to use e-voting systems.
Given the negative attitudes reported in our study, an obvious question
would be how trust can be repaired? Part of the problem is that the low
level of trust in government springs from perceived shortcomings in both
integrity and competence (Rousseau and Sitkin, 1998). This double fail-
ure renders the recovery task much more diffi
fficult: research on trust repair
suggests that remedies for integrity violations are at odds with those for
Identifying Online Citizens 117
competence violations. Kim and Dirk (2006) fi
find that a full apology is
more successful for a competence-based violation whereas for an integrity-
based violation what works better is to mitigate the blame with external
attribution, or indeed deny the fault outright.
So if the answer lies neither in technology nor in appropriate speech
acts, such as denial or apology, what steps should governments t
ake in
order to retrieve the situation? Showing more transparency in personal
data storage and processing might ultimately cast governments in a more
benevolent light. There was a clear distinction in our data between the
benevolence aspect of trustworthiness, with the forceful use of emo-
tive expressions and rhetoric, and the competence and integrity aspects,
which respondents tended to express in more rationalistic terms. Recent
research based on neurological analysis showed a clear distinction in the
brain areas associated with the dimensions of trust and distrust, with
credibility and non-credibility being mostly associated with the brain’s
more cognitive areas, while benevolence and malevolence are mostly
associated with the brain’s more emotional areas (Benbasat, Gefen,
& Pavlou, 2010). Benevolence appears to have potential for restoring
trust; perhaps because it speaks to the emotional rather than the rational
side, it off
ffers a more direct route to the perceptions of citizens. Future
research could explore this further and also examine the ethical consid-
erations involved.
This study focused on data collected in just two European Member
States and its relevance is in the analytical rather than the statistical gen-
eralizations that have emerged. However further studies in other Member
States should be encouraged in order to widen the basis and strength of
the generalizations found here. This research has thrown into sharp focus
some issues of real importance to public authorities in their present quest
to move towards citizen-centric e-government. There is keenly felt short-
fall of trust demonstrated by citizens’ negative attitudes. This defi ci
fi ency
can only threaten the success of the new systems, hinder their acceptance
and put into jeopardy their eventual institutionalization. Our analysis of
the negative attitudes expressed found three recurrent themes in the dis-
course of our respondents: IT failures and data leaks, mission creep and
political history. These themes echo three established aspects of trust-
worthiness found in the literature and in our data: integrity, competence,
and benevolence. The aspect most commonly referred to in our data is
the last one, although much previous research has tended to focus on the
first two. Integrity and competence are aspects of trust that are difficult to
recover from when found lacking, although apologies have featured in the
responses of public authorities. Benevolence however remains an aspect of
trustworthiness that public authorities might reasonably examine further
and policy makers in this area should consider changes that demonstrate
more goodwill toward citizens. Citizens are more reassured by instrumen-
tal acts rather than by speech acts: deeds not words.
118 Ruth Halperin and James Backhouse
NOTES
1.
http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/servlets/Doc?id=25286
2.
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/10/200&
format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en
3.
http://www.ccbe.eu/fi le
fi admin/user_upload/NTCdocument/en_annex_tech-
nical_s1_1192451405.pdf
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10 Profi ling E-Participation Research
fi
in Europe and North America
A Bibliometric Analysis about
Articles Published
Manuel Pedro Rodríguez Bolívar,
Laura Alcaide Muñoz, and Antonio M.
López Hernández
Manuel Pedro Rodríguez Bolívar, et al.
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
Web technology, particularly Web 2.0 and social networks, has changed the
nature of political and public dialog, encouraging participation of citizens,
allowing a greater involvement of citizens in public aff
ffairs and promot-
ing public managers to use them in order to create more aff or
ff dable, par-
ticipatory and transparent public sector management models. Nonetheless,
despite the relevance of the e-participation process in public administra-
Public Sector Transformation Through E-Government Page 21
