How-to Bureaucracy: A Concept of Citizens’ Administrative Literacy

Abstract

Administrative literacy is the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic information and services from public organizations needed to make appropriate decisions. Citizens’ competencies necessary for successful interactions with public administration remain a widely neglected resource. Administrative burden resulting from citizen–state interactions may impact citizens differently depending on their available resources to cope. Research from other fields such as health literacy suggests that these concepts influence a variety of outcomes for both the individual and society. The article develops a concept of administrative literacy to provide new approaches to various fields of public administration and management research.

The learning, compliance, and psychological costs of applying for the Disability Support Pension

“…Although broad client satisfaction survey data are published in the Annual Reports of Services Australia and its antecedent forms (Services Australia, 2021), these do not differentiate between payment types, they do not deal specifically with application processes and nor are they theoretically informed. The broader research gap is reflective of both the pre‐occupation of some relevant disciplines with other aspects of the application process (such as legal scholarship, which focuses on much rarer events in appeals and reviews rather than the experience of application processes (Meers 2020; Adler, 2010)) and the relative recency of focus on citizen experience of administrative processes in public administration scholarship in this area (Döring, 2021).…”

“…Simultaneously, a number of relevant additional frameworks have emerged to explain and assess citizens’ capacity and capabilities for engaging with social security and associated legal processes, frequently drawing on broader ideas about health and financial literacy. These include administrative literacy (Döring, 2021); administrative capital (Masood & Nisar, 2021); social insurance literacy (Ståhl et al., 2021); and legal capability and general legal confidence (Pleasence & Balmer, 2019b). Resolving conceptual inconsistencies was one of the valuable contributions of the theoretical model of AB set out by Herd and Moynihan (2019), in that it explicitly draws together insights from a range of existing bodies of research.…”

Mitigating Psychological Costs—The Role of Citizens’ Administrative Literacy and Social Capital

“…Administrative literacy was measured using an adapted short version of the Administrative Literacy Scale developed by Döring (2019) consisting of four items. The items have been framed for the specific policy setting of unemployment insurance.…”

How Do Disadvantaged Groups Seek Information About Public Services? A Randomized Controlled Trial of Communication Technologies

“…By lowering the cost of interacting with providers, technologies can also foster a sense of community between stakeholders (Meijer 2011;Sorrentino, Sicilia, and Howlett 2018), boost confidence in public institutions (Tolbert and Mossberger 2006), and leave more funds available for programmatic activities (Peña-López 2016), However, a review of policy reports concludes that "almost all make claims that increasing connectivity leads to economic growth and widespread social development [but] either do not cite any evidence […] or use non-rigorous and potentially biased studies" (Friederici, Ojanperä, and Graham 2017, 2), ignoring major remaining obstacles (Rhoades et al 2017;Robinson et al 2015, 569). For example, when bureaucratic processes are already complex, requiring the use of technology to navigate these processes create additional burdens for those with low technological literacy (Döring 2021). Due to these theoretical and empirical limitations, it remains unclear whether newer technologies facilitate public service access in comparison to traditional communication methods.…”

“…While many governments seek to reduce administrative burden, others intentionally increase it to limit disfavored groups’ access to benefits (Moynihan, Herd, and Harvey 2015). In addition, geographic isolation, linguistic and cultural barriers, discrimination, weaker human capital, lack of experience with administrative processes, and clientelism exacerbate administrative burden (Battaglio Jr. et al 2019; Bussell 2012; Döring 2021; Ensor and Cooper 2004; Lee et al 2014). Therefore, although disadvantaged groups are most in need of aid and most likely to qualify for it, they are less likely to access public services designed to help them (Christensen et al 2020).…”