The Distrustful Digital Citizen: How the Digitalisation of Government Has Failed to Address the Crisis of Confidence in Public Institutions

Over the last 20 years, governments worldwide have implemented vast digital transformation programs, following the recommendations of supranational institutions such as the World Bank and the OECD (Falk, Römmele, and Silverman, 2017). Government digitalization has often been presented not only as a way to improve the efficiency of services but also as a solution to the chronic crisis of confidence in political institutions (Benay, 2018). But has digitalization truly helped address public distrust? In this paper, I argue that government digitalization programs have thus far failed to mend distrust in public institutions. I highlight that many countries that are part of the alliance of "leading digital governments"—such as Estonia, South Korea, Denmark, and the UK—have in fact experienced rising distrust in political institutions in recent years (OECD, 2024). The paper explores the reasons behind this failure. I argue that, beyond unrealistic expectations, this failure stems from the instrumental and transactional logic behind digitalization programs. With their emphasis on self-service, location independence, and seamless user experiences, these programs risk widening the gap between the state and its citizens, exacerbating the conditions of individualization and isolation that have often been seen as correlate of societal distrust (Inglehart and Welzel, 2000; Holmberg and Rothstein, 2012). This situation calls for a radical rethinking about the purpose of digital government and for some acceptance of its inherent limits. Even when digitalisation manages to increase the efficiency of certain public services, this may not automatically translate into achieving gains in terms of public trust in institutions which often hinges on other processes such as political participation, identity and sense of belonging. I conclude by developing some reflections on what the apparent intractability of the problem of distrust in public institutions contribute to the understanding of the nature of trust and distrust in a digital society.