This paper concerns the construction of the individuals to whom public e-services are aimed, and who are expected to participate in demands driven development of public sector. The argument is that these individuals are differently positioned in relation to and have different prerequisites to participate in demands driven development processes, and that this has to be taken into account by practitioners who are working demands driven development of public sector. The aim of the paper is thus to address the need to acknowledge differences in individual users' possibilities to participate in the development of public sector through opening up and critically analyze categories indicating participants – e.g. ‘users’, ‘citizens’ or ‘practitioners’. This is done through a discourse theoretical analysis of a text; the Swedish Guidelines for Demands Driven Development. The analysis of the text shows that the dominant category signifying a participatory subject is ‘target group(s)’, which is articulated according to four different themes. However, none of these themes articulates an unpacking of the category ‘target group(s)’, and the term is instead used to signify everyone as if these were alike and had the same prerequisites and possibilities to participate in demands driven development processes – in discourse theoretical terms ‘target group(s) works as an empty signifier. In this way differences between the individuals who are included in the category are hidden, and practitioners are left with no guidelines for how to deal with these.