After an overview of OGD and trust and the theoretical link between both, a question arises: can OGD help to revert European citizens’ trust erosion in public institutions? Although limited, there is evidence that supports that making government data open and accessible is expected to have a positive effect on citizens’ institutional trust, as one of the prominent good governance results of open data (
Meijer, 2014). European national governments, encouraged by the EU, are implementing open data policies. The first relevant piece of legislation in this area is dated back to 2003 (
European Parliament and Council, 2003). That Directive on the re-use of public sector information was subsequently amended and recently, in 2019, it was recast “in the interest of clarity.” Now, its title explicitly includes open data and recognizes the importance of an open government data environment in order to promote accountability and transparency (
European Parliament and Council, 2019). OGD is then critical for transparency which, as stated by
Grimmelikhuijsen (2012), “allows external actors to monitor the internal workings or performance of an organization.” Those OGD policies allow citizens to be better informed of how the government is performing in different areas of interest and, consequently, they are expected to trust more in their government (
Meijer, 2009). Recently,
Gonzálvez-Gallego, Nieto-Torrejón, and Pérez-Cárceles (2020) found that the implementation of open data strategies boosts citizen confidence in a set of institutions, both directly and when this relationship is mediated by satisfaction.
Altayar (2018) posed that when government discloses open data, it encourages citizens’ engagement, which increases trust in institutions, so that this result becomes a motivation for the adoption of openness. Also, when open data can be re-used by external stakeholders and results can be replicated, confidence in institutions improves (
Meijer, 2014). Moreover, it is important that citizens perceive that their government is adopting an open culture, since this is expected to promote institutional trust (
Hood, 2006).