Reviews & Essays

State and Local Government Review

2015, Vol. 47(3) 205-213
Using Transparency to ª The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0160323X15599427
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Trust in Local Government:
Can It Work?

Gregory A. Porumbescu1

Abstract
Increasingly, local governments view transparency as a means of (re)connecting with a citizenry that,
by many accounts, has grown distant. By improving the public’s access to government information,
the expectation is that seeds for more responsive and trustworthy local government will be sown.
Yet, empirical assessments of the relationship between transparency, responsiveness, and trust in
local government have been mixed. Therefore, the intention of this article is to provide an overview
of prior research that attempts to conceptually, and empirically, tie transparency to greater
responsiveness and trust in local government. Based upon this review of the literature, implications
for effective practice are discussed.

Keywords
transparency, local government, trust in government, responsiveness

Transparency has long been considered a cor-
nerstone of good governance (Hood 2010). It
can improve decision making (Bok 1989),
impede corruption (Bertot, Jaeger, and Grimes
2010), enhance accountability (Pina, Torres,
and Royo 2007), and foster a more informed
and understanding citizenry (Cook, Jacobs, and
Kim 2010). When taken together, the varied
benefits of enhanced transparency should cul-
minate in more responsive and trustworthy
public organizations (Goetz and Jenkins 2001;
Welch, Hinnant, and Moon 2005; Kim and Lee
2012). Therefore, recent attempts by local gov-
ernments to enhance transparency have gener-
ally been welcomed.
Yet, many are now challenging this long-
standing understanding of the effects that
accompany enhanced transparency. Some cau-
tion that enhanced transparency can overload
citizens with information, triggering confusion
and reductions to functional accountability
(O’Neill 2002; Porumbescu and Im 2015). Oth-
ers find that greater exposure to information
pertaining to the inner workings of government
can actually reduce citizens’ perceptions of
public sector legitimacy and trustworthiness
(S. Grimmelikhuijsen et al. 2013; De Fine
Licht 2014). With respect to performance
management, enhanced transparency, when
1
Department of Public Administration, Northern Illinois
University, DeKalb, IL, USA
Corresponding Author:
Gregory A. Porumbescu, Department of Public Adminis-
tration, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 60115,
USA.
Email: gporumbescu@niu.edu
206
complemented by attempts to bolster perfor-
mance evaluation, has been found to actually
detract from performance by incentivizing
‘‘minimum compliance rather than com-
mitted enthusiasm’’ of public employees
(Norman 2001, 83; Prat 2005). While this
developing stream of research does not
necessarily argue against greater transpar-
ency, it does highlight the need to better
understand implications of attempts to
increase transparency.
Due to citizens’ close proximity to local
governments, as well as a rapid increase in
attempts to enhance transparency at this level,
this area of government is a particularly inter-
esting context to assess the effects of attempts
to enhance transparency. Accordingly, a large
number of studies have attempted to offer
insight into how public disclosure influences
the way local governments function. While
valuable, the breadth of findings makes distil-
ling key themes and implications for effective
practice challenging.
This article synthesizes the various perspec-
tives on transparency and also provides an
overview of the implications of local govern-
ments’ attempts to enhance transparency. To
this end, two broad questions guide this article:
1. How can transparency be used to promote
more responsive performance by local
governments? and
2. How can transparency be used to promote
greater citizen trust in local government?
Emphasis is placed upon responsiveness and
trust in government in particular, as these are
often outcomes of primary interest for reforms
intending to enhance transparency (S. G. Grim-
melikhuijsen 2012).
This review proceeds as follows. First, an
overview is provided of research that discusses
what transparency is and the different ways
transparency can promote more responsive and
trustworthy local government. Following this,
the role of transparency as a tool in promoting
more responsive and trustworthy local govern-
ment is reevaluated and implications for more
effective use of transparency, as a tool for
State and Local Government Review 47(3)
establishing more responsive and trustworthy
local government, are discussed.
Defining Transparency: What
Does It Entail?
Transparency refers to the extent external
stakeholders are afforded regular access to
information about the way their public orga-
nizations operate (Meijer 2013). Through dis-
closure of government information, a key
objective of enhanced transparency is to
improve the public’s understanding of what
their government is doing and why. As will
be explained, this improved understanding of
government is thought to engender greater trust
in government and more responsive public
organizations (S. Grimmelikhuijsen et al.
2013; Porumbescu and Im 2015).
In order to enable the public to accurately
understand what their government is doing,
information that is publicly disclosed must be
comprehensive in the sense that it touches upon
the issues necessary to understand the actions
taken by the government. There are several fra-
meworks that have been developed to provide a
more systematic understanding of the types of
information necessary to enhance ‘‘government
transparency.’’ Two examples of such frame-
works are outlined below.
The first framework divides local govern-
ment transparency into four dimensions (Cucci-
niello and Nasi 2014). The first institutional
dimension focuses upon disclosure of informa-
tion pertaining to the activities of public organi-
zations. The second political dimension refers
to information pertaining to political represen-
tatives, such as their salary or their attendance
in town hall meetings. The third dimension
relates to financial management and outlines
how public actors make use of the financial
resources they are allocated. The fourth dimen-
sion of transparency, service delivery, outlines
how local government performs in its delivery
of public services. Accordingly, disclosure of
information pertaining to each of these dimen-
sions is critical to affording citizens a compre-
hensive understanding of how each component
of their local government functions.
Porumbescu
The second framework divides transpar-
ency of local government in general into three
sequential components (Heald 2003; S. G.
Grimmelikhuijsen 2012). The first compo-
nent, decision-making transparency, refers to
citizens’ access to information about discus-
sions leading up to the adoption of a particular
policy—who were the actors involved in the
process and what points were considered in
the decision to adopt a particular course of
action? The second dimension, policy trans-
parency, outlines how an adopted policy
intends to address a particular social issue as
well as anticipated effects on different seg-
ments of the population. The third and final
dimension is policy outcome transparency,
which addresses the provision of information
to the public that details the actual effects of
a particular policy. Taken together, these
three dimensions, like those proposed by Cuc-
ciniello and Nasi, are intended to provide the
public a comprehensive understanding of
what the government is doing, how the gov-
ernment is doing it, and why.
As both frameworks illustrate, enhancing
transparency of local government means much
more than the mere provision of ‘‘more infor-
mation to more people’’ (Welch, Hinnant, and
Moon 2005, 375). Rather, the information
needed to enhance local government transpar-
ency is diverse. In large part, this is due to the
broad spectrum of obligations local govern-
ments are responsible for. As such, without
access to such comprehensive information, the
public will be unable to accurately understand
and evaluate the actions of their government.
For example, exposure to information on policy
outcomes (policy outcome transparency) may
help the public obtain a better understanding
of the effects of a particular policy. Yet, with-
out exposure to information that discusses the
intended effects of said policy (policy transpar-
ency), it is impossible for the public to accu-
rately gauge performance.
In the sections that follow, two claims that
frequently accompany decisions to enhance
transparency are assessed. The first claim is
that enhanced transparency promotes greater
responsiveness of local governments, whereas
207
the second claim is that enhanced transparency
engenders greater trust in local government.
While transparency is thought to result in an
assortment of benefits to local government, this
review focuses upon responsiveness and trust in
government in particular as these claims tend to
be among the widely most discussed in the
local government literature.
Claim 1: Transparency Promotes
More Responsive Local
Government
Accountability plays an important role in link-
ing transparency to more responsive local gov-
ernment. By affording greater public access to
government information, external stakeholders
are empowered to align the performance of
their local government more closely with their
own preferences. Therefore, from this perspec-
tive, a central objective of transparency policy
is mainly one of empowerment. Moreover, as
discussed earlier, achieving this objective is
contingent upon the disclosure of various forms
of government information.
For enhanced transparency to actually
empower citizens, it must be both accessed by
and intelligible to the general public. Prior
research, however, finds this to be a challenge.
For example, Cook, Jacobs, and Kim (2010)
reason that motivation among citizens to obtain
government information will vary according to
the subject area—retirees are more likely to be
more motivated to obtain information about
changes to social security than recent college
graduates. Etzioni (2010) argues that not all cit-
izens possess the same cognitive capacity—
some will be able to make more effective use
of the information transparency affords them
than others. Taken together, two key challenges
can be identified when attempting to link
greater transparency to greater responsiveness
in local government. The first challenge is to
effectively disseminate the types of informa-
tion necessary to empower the public, whereas
the second challenge is to ensure that access to
such information empowers all segments of the
population equally.
208
Empirical assessments of the utility of
transparency in promoting more responsive
local government also bring to light some
additional challenges in linking greater trans-
parency to a more responsive local govern-
ment. To highlight these challenges, three
examples are discussed. Each example was
chosen for the reason it extends the discussion
in the preceding paragraph by providing more
applied perspectives on the relationship
between transparency, accountability, and
responsiveness.
First, a recent study by Im, Porumbescu, and
Lee (2013) examined the Seoul Metropolitan
Government’s widely used nonemergency call
center (Dasan Call Center), which was tasked
with enhancing the transparency, accountabil-
ity, and responsiveness of the Seoul Metropol-
itan Government. Their analysis indicated that,
while the Dasan Call Center improved citizens’
access to information about the Seoul Metro-
politan Government, critical responses to this
information on the part of citizens were often
addressed selectively. Specifically, the mayor,
whose purview the operation fell under, would
typically only respond to citizens’ attempts to
hold their government accountable when he
thought doing so would give him a leg up on
a political rival. In this sense, while overall
government transparency was increased by the
Dasan Call Center, the links to accountability
and responsiveness were only present when the
Mayor deemed them politically expedient.
A second study, by Pina, Torres, and Royo
(2007), examines how local governments in fif-
teen European Union member states made use
of e-government websites to enhance levels of
transparency, accountability, and responsive-
ness to citizens. In general, their findings are
similar to those in Seoul—local governments,
across the fifteen nations, tended to make active
use of websites to afford citizens access to gov-
ernment information. Yet, while citizens’
access to information increased, the websites
typically had little bearing upon accountability
in these local governments, as the websites
typically lacked an interactive component.
Another notable finding here is that govern-
ments were selective in their disclosure of
State and Local Government Review 47(3)
information in that they tended to be willing
to enhance transparency related to some areas,
while avoiding greater transparency in others.
For example, governments may be more forth-
coming with information about public services
but provide less information on the political
dimension.
A third example examines the nexus of
transparency, accountability, and responsive-
ness through a lens of influenza pandemic
planning by local governments across the
United States (French 2011). As the author
explains, from an administrative perspective,
meaningful pandemic planning requires a
dynamic exchange of information between
various segments of the population and the
local government responsible for their safety.
Yet, of the fifty cities surveyed, only twenty-
eight had ‘‘a pandemic influenza plan that is
available for public review, either online or
by request’’ (p. 261). In fact, as French finds,
influenza planning in most municipalities
appears to constitute a very closed activity.
As such, despite the clear benefits of
enhanced transparency and responsiveness in
this particular policy domain, there is a
marked tendency among many municipal
governments in the United States to eschew
greater transparency and limit opportunities
for public input.
When taken together, what these examples
illustrate is that transparency, on its own, is
insufficient for stimulating greater administra-
tive accountability and responsiveness in local
government. Rather, attempts to enhance trans-
parency must be complemented by the estab-
lishment formal channels through which the
public can consistently act upon the informa-
tion they are afforded. Yet, in practice, such
opportunities are seldom provided. As a final
point, while the examples discussed here
address the relationship between transparency
and responsiveness at a single level of govern-
ment, and within specific administrative con-
texts, further evidence suggests that the trends
identified here are pervasive in that they are
found across different national contexts and
levels of government (Wong and Welch 2004;
Fox 2007; Piotrowski et al. 2009; Eom 2014).
Porumbescu
Claim 2: Transparency Promotes
Trust in Local Government
In addition to enhancing responsiveness, trans-
parency is argued to promote public trust in
government. This is because transparency can
be used to correct misperceptions of govern-
ment performance that result from a lack of
information. Specifically, citizens often lack
objective information about what their govern-
ment does for them, or how well their govern-
ment is performing, and as a result are overly
critical of the performance of their local gov-
ernment (Kelly 2002; Mettler 2011; Im, Porum-
bescu, and Lee 2013).
Kelly and Swindell (2002) outline two
forms of errors citizens make when eval-
uating local government that occur when
citizens lack information about their govern-
ment. The first is an error in attribution that
occurs when citizens are not aware of who is
responsible for the delivery of a particular
public service (p. 612). For example, citi-
zens may believe that a private or nonprofit
organization is responsible for the operation
of a local public health clinic. The second is
an error in assessment, where citizens’ eva-
luations of a service contradict data afforded
by objective performance indicators. For
example, citizens may perceive water pro-
vided by a local water sanitation facility as
less potable than bottled water provided by
a private manufacturer, despite scientific
evidence to the contrary.
Errors in attribution and errors in assess-
ment, and the absence of information that
causes them, can lead to a situation where the
public perceives government as not doing
enough to promote citizens’ well-being. Some
argue that enhancing transparency can reduce
errors of attribution and assessment by expos-
ing the public to information that clarifies
how local government is contributing to the
public’s well-being, and to what effect (Buell
and Norton 2013). By allowing citizens to
understand more clearly how the actions of
local government are contributing to the pub-
lic’s well-being, transparency is reasoned to
promote greater trust in government.
209
Yet, despite claims that greater transparency
can enhance levels of trust in government, evi-
dence suggests the relationship between these
two constructs is far more complex. To illus-
trate some of the contours of this relationship
between transparency and trust in local govern-
ment in an applied context, an overview of
findings from prior literature drawn from dis-
tinct administrative contexts is provided.
Worthy (2013) has examined the relation-
ship between transparency and trust in local
government in the United Kingdom. In his
analysis, an interesting dynamic to the relation-
ship between transparency and trust in local
government is uncovered, in that the medium
through which citizens access government
information appears to bear heavily upon their
decision to trust government. As Worthy
explains, in many instances, citizens’ exposure
to government information came through their
use of mass media outlets, which often obtain
information from local governments via free-
dom of information requests. The author
observed that the effects of this mediated form
of transparency would typically vary according
to whether the coverage portrayed government
in a positive or negative light. As such, in this
instance, no consistent link was uncovered lead-
ing Worthy to conclude that transparency pos-
sessed ‘‘no general impact on trust’’ (p. 406).
In contrast to Worthy’s findings, research by
Tolbert and Mossberger (2006) offers a differ-
ent perspective on the relationship between
transparency and citizens’ trust in local govern-
ments in the United States. Specifically, this
article did not offer direct evidence of a posi-
tive relationship between transparency and trust
in local government. However, the authors did
find evidence of a strong relationship between
citizens’ use of e-government, their perceptions
of local government responsiveness, and their
levels of trust in the local government. These
findings are interpreted to suggest that the
information afforded to citizens via local gov-
ernment’s websites may clarify the role their
government plays in responding to public needs
and improving the quality of life, which in turn
bolsters levels of trust in local government
(p. 366). To this end, the results of this study
210
can be interpreted to offer a degree of support
for those arguing that transparency’s primary
contribution to trust in government stems from
its ability to demonstrate the various ways the
public sector is contributing to the public’s
well-being.
As a final example, research by S. Grimme-
likhuijsen et al. (2013) sought to examine
whether national culture had any bearing on the
relationship between transparency and trust in
government. Through the use of a series of
experiments, the authors assessed how decision
making, policy, and policy outcome transpar-
ency related to citizens’ perceptions of public
sector trustworthiness in South Korean central
government and Dutch local governments.
They found that the relationship between the
different forms of transparency and citizens’
perceptions of public sector trustworthiness,
in both contexts, generally lacked a positive
relationship to perceptions of trustworthiness.
Moreover, when policy outcome transparency
conveyed information pertaining to policy out-
comes that were negative (a policy fell short of
achieving its stated objectives), a slight nega-
tive effect upon trust in government was uncov-
ered, with the magnitude of the effect slightly
higher in South Korea. From these findings, the
authors conclude that in general, transparency
lacks an impact upon trust in the government,
unless the information disseminated is nega-
tive, in which case trust in the government may
be negatively impacted.
These three studies were selected in order to
illustrate different shapes the relationship
between transparency and trust in government
can take in an applied setting. A common
theme found in each of these studies is that
transparency lacks a consistent relationship to
trust in government—in some instances, trans-
parency can reduce levels of trust in govern-
ment, but seldom does transparency, on its
own, result in greater trust in government.
Implications for Practice: The Evolving
Ethos of Local Government Transparency?
Hood (2007, 192), who has written extensively
on the topic of public sector transparency,
State and Local Government Review 47(3)
observes that ‘‘mostly, transparency is one of
those banal ideas . . . that are taken as unexcep-
tionable in discussions of governance and pub-
lic management.’’ To this end, even if attempts
to enhance transparency fall short of achieving
objectives such as improving the responsive-
ness of, or enhancing public trust in local gov-
ernment, they can still be construed as
successful, as long it can be demonstrated that
public access to some form of government
information expanded. In this way, transpar-
ency in local government has traditionally been
viewed as more of an administrative value that
undergirds good governance, than a public ser-
vice in itself (cf. Piotrowski 2014). However,
with developments in information and commu-
nication technology and, consequently, the
increased ease with which local governments
can now publicly disclose information, current
discourse suggests that the way we conceive of
transparency has evolved subtly, yet conspicu-
ously, over the course of the past decades to
embody characteristics and concerns typically
attributed to public services.
What has become apparent in the course of
this article is that local governments are begin-
ning to pay more attention to issues related to
the implementation of and outcomes associ-
ated with transparency. In this respect, dis-
course on local government transparency is
now shifting toward concerns related to effec-
tive practice with regard to information provi-
sion (Asgarkhani 2005; Bertot, Jaeger, and
Grimes 2010; Porumbescu and Im 2015;
Cucciniello et al. 2014). As such, based upon
the literature previously discussed, two impli-
cations for effective practice are outlined.
First, as the way transparency is conceived
of increasingly incorporates aspects of a public
service, greater attention will have to be paid to
considerations that relate to the supply and
demand for government information—is the
government supplying citizens with the types
of information they demand? As discussed
earlier, the general concept of local govern-
ment transparency incorporates a host of dis-
tinct forms of information pertaining to
actions taken by local government. However,
the types of information publicly disclosed
Porumbescu
by local governments, often in accordance
with various legal obligations, do not necessa-
rily lead to increased availability of govern-
ment information that the public views as
relevant (Cucciniello et al. 2014). Rather,
merely adhering to legal obligations for dis-
closure is, in itself, unlikely to be sufficient for
obtaining goals of engendering greater respon-
siveness and trust in local government. As
such, efforts to enhance public disclosure must
be supplemented by attempts to ensure that the
transparency policies of local governments
disclose the types of information that the pub-
lic deems relevant, so as to improve the
chances of the general public accessing and
using the information afforded to them. It is
only by ensuring the general public accesses
government information that we can then hope
to see greater responsiveness and trust in local
government.
Second, as discussed earlier, there is a ten-
dency for transparency to fall short of enhan-
cing accountability and trust in government.
What this suggests is that, because the informa-
tion being supplied by government is perceived
as lacking immediate relevance to the general
public it is underused and, therefore, fails to
fulfill objectives of enhancing trust in govern-
ment and local government responsiveness.
To some, the lack of consistent empirical evi-
dence has led to doubts over the utility of trans-
parency in achieving such objectives. To
others, these findings indicate that in order to
achieve goals of enhanced responsiveness and
trust, governments must pay closer attention
to the source(s) responsible for delivering the
information. Indeed, citizens tend to doubt
information that is delivered directly by a pub-
lic organization, yet find the same information
more credible when disseminated via an inde-
pendent organization (James and Van Ryzin
2015). As such, transparency may fall short of
stimulating greater trust or responsiveness
because of the way the information is being
delivered.
Building upon this point, in an analysis of
case studies, van Zyl (2014) finds that the abil-
ity of transparency to fulfill its objectives stems
from the relationships a government agency
211
cultivates with different civil society organiza-
tions in the community it serves. This is largely
because of civil society organization’s ability to
operate as an intermediary that effectively
communicates the relevance of government
information to different segments of the com-
munity. Taken together, a key implication for
practice to be drawn is that effective, efficient,
and equitable delivery of government informa-
tion necessitates the careful cultivation of a net-
work of third party actors (e.g., universities or
nonprofits), who are viewed as credible by both
citizens and local government. Through estab-
lishing such a network of credible intermedi-
aries to disseminate government information,
it is possible for local governments to capitalize
upon the ability of these organizations to effec-
tively communicate the relevance of informa-
tion pertaining to their local government to
different segments of the community, while at
the same time creating the potential for citizens
to evaluate information more objectively.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of inter-
est with respect to the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the
research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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Author Biography
Gregory A. Porumbescu is an assistant professor
and received his PhD from the Graduate School
of Public Administration at Seoul National Univer-
sity in 2013. His research interests primarily relate
to public sector applications of information and
communications technology, transparency and
accountability, and citizens’ perceptions of public
service provision. His work has appeared in or
is forthcoming in The Journal of Public Adminis-
tration Research and Theory, Public Administra-
tion Review, Administration & Society, Policy &
Internet, and Public Performance and Manage-
ment Review.