Reading “Keywords” by Raymond Williams prompted the thought of why the use of the term ‘e-government’? And within the domain of ‘e-government’, how are some of the keywords understood? What does ‘culture’ mean in the context of ‘cultural change’ which we hear so much about? What about ‘democracy’ or ‘underpriviledged’?

Raymond Williams examines how certain ‘keywords’ have been ‘formed, altered, redefined, influenced, modified, confused and reinforced as the historical contexts in which they were applied change to give us their current meaning and significance’.

Examples of words which could relate to ‘e-government’ include the following:

behaviour, bureaucracy, capitalism, communication, community, consumer, culture (an extract from the book), democracy, development, equality, management, private, reform, regional, representation, society, standards, technology, tradition, underpriviledged, unemployment, welfare, work

The method that Raymond Williams introduces has been developed and used by others in the field of critical media theory ( and wider).
There’s an interactive example here

The idea of examining what the ‘keywords’ of e-government might mean - and how there could be different interpretations of those meanings should raise big questions. However, the whole application and development of e-government is happening with very little public discourse - and certainly one which most ‘citizens’ ( a good subject for a new ‘keyword’) have not had much impact upon.

For real user-centred services - if that’s what e-government is really about - then the users themselves will need to be engaged. Or do we come back to the looming threat of Gershon - that e-government is driven by ‘efficiency savings’ - job cuts and service reductions?

Efficiency is another good subject for a keyword essay.Not everyone will have the same notions as to what that might mean.