Trust Management in Mid-Sized Towns

About 80% of all public services in Germany are provided at the municipal level, and with the passage of the Online Access Act, the online provision of 575 public services will become mandatory across all federal levels. However, citizens nationwide still prefer to go to the office in person. Smaller municipalities in particular face the challenge of creating costly online services that are little used. In this context, the importance of the relationship of trust between citizens and public administrations comes into focus. A large number of studies show that trust has a positive effect on the willingness to use and on actual usage public online services. Towns in particular can benefit from the fact that they tend to enjoy a high level of trust. This is due, for example, to the spatial proximity, which allows a closer evaluation of political-administrative processes from the citizens’ point of view, but also makes political decisions directly perceptible. The trust of citizens in local public administrations can therefore be seen as a special asset of towns as compared to cities. However, the increasingly digital mediation of citizens’ interactions with their local public administration is changing the relationship of trust and is increasingly turning the technical infrastructure into an actor that is trusted or mediates trust between administration and citizens. In addition, the preservation of citizens’ digital sovereignty is increasingly in tension with the digitization measures of public administrations and can also have an impact on existing trust relationships. Against this background, the project investigates how existing trust relationships are changing and what new trust relationships are emerging in towns as a result of increasing administrative digitalization? Furthermore, a tool will be conceptualized that supports the strategic management of trust relationships in towns and that balances and supports the protection of economic interests of the public administration on the one hand and the protection of the digital sovereignty of citizens on the other hand.