The aim of most public sector digitization programmes is the status quo, delivered more cheaply. Rather than saving the public from bureaucracy, digital has created new administrative burdens. The public are engaged as consumers in a way that misunderstands the nature of what makes public services public. Instead of digital being recognised as critical to the operation of a modern state, it is too often an afterthought.

It's time to share the benefits of digital with the public more fully.

This book describes the types of interaction we should expect from the next generation of public services, the digital platforms and infrastructure they will be built with, and the public sector design values needed to make them a reality.

It includes thirty illustrated design patterns, ten strategic interventions, and global examples of emerging patterns in digital government. It also highlights some foundational ideas in computer science, design and public policy to show how the challenges posed by the digital state are neither novel nor new. The book will enable more policy professionals to think like technologists and designers, and it will help more technologists and designers to think about public policy.

Human animals are despoiling nature and causing a sixth extinction on Earth. Our natural environment is being compromised, and birds and other animals are disappearing at an alarming rate. Flight from Grace does not so much reveal the extent of the damage as ask and answer the perplexing question: why?This book traces human reverence for birds from the Stone Age and the New Stone Age, through the cultures of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Peru, and Greece and through biblical traditions, up to its vestiges in the present. Richard Pope takes a hard look at Judaeo-Christian and ancient Greek thought to demonstrate how the emergence of anthropocentrism and belittling of nature led to our present-day ecological dilemma. Striking images of cultural artifacts -- many little-known -- together with extensive discussion of art, music, literature, and religion illustrate the paradox in our contemporary relationship to the natural world. Humanity, in moving from its paleolithic origins to modern times, has simultaneously distanced itself from and disenchanted nature.Suggesting that the replacement of an animistic worldview with a mechanistic one has led humans to deny their animality, Flight from Grace calls on readers to appreciate how our past relationship with birds might help transform our current relationship with nature.

The human side of birding comes to the fore in The Reluctant Twitcher, a serious yet humorous account of birds and birding and the art of chasing rarities. Richard Pope, a lifelong birder, had successfully avoided this latter pursuit for many years but capitulated in 2007 when he embarked on his Big Year, the object being to record at least three hundred birds in Ontario within that calendar period.

Almost instantly, a relatively normal birdwatcher morphed into a twitcher, albeit reluctantly, pursuing rare species of birds from Rainy River to the Ottawa and well beyond his wildest expectations. Though it was a challenge that was not without trials and disappointments, Pope describes all his adventures with self-deprecating humour. Not just another book on birding, Pope's unique approach is supported by an array of exceptional colour photographs.

Superior Illusions is an epic portrayal of life as experienced on the Voyageur Route from Lachine to the great summer meeting-place at Grand Portage. Drawing on his extensive research, Richard Pope presents a typical young Scot, employed as a clerk by the North West Company. A recent arrival from Scotland, the responsible yet inexperienced Dugald Macleod embarks on his first trip up country. Neil Broadfoot's original artwork realistically captures both the beauty and the perils of those turbulent times.

... a good story, unconventionally told ... it gives the reader a good sense of fur trade life in the period ... filled with accurate, often gripping details ...
- Ramsay Cook, Professor Emeritus, York University

Richard Pope's narrative and Neil Broadfoot's illustrations offer a deeper look at both the adventures and the hardships of the lives of those on whom the success of the great fur trading enterprise ultimately depended ... nothing else has so succeeded in giving me a sense of the life of a voyageur as this book.
-- Kirk Wipper, Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto; Founder and Special Advisor, Canadian Canoe Museum

... an absolute delight to read ... a gripping tale ... there's real suspense throughout the book ... the story is not one that romanticizes the voyageur experience [but rather] an attempt to recreate 1790s voyageur life as it really was.
- Justine Allan, Associate Editor, Voyageur Magazine

The noonday sun mercilessly scorched the nodding wheat field of Black Bill Jones's farm. Occasionally a welcome little gypsy breeze lazed across the field rolling the grain heads before it in long flowing waves, but for the most part the men just had to sweat it out in the still, hot air...

An epic tale of love, murder, and war, Richard Pope's Shadows Gathering offers a haunting glimpse into rural Canada during the tumultuous days of World War I.

With stunning detail, readers are transported back and forth between a logging camp in 1909, where a tragic accident with far-reaching consequences takes place, and the daily lives, loves, and hopes, of an isolated village's inhabitants in 1914.

A richly imagined cast of characters including Poles, Germans, Blacks, Irish Catholics, and English Protestants contributes to a rich social fabric that is racked by war, love, and a violent crime that haunts them all.

Follow the rise and fall of a tenacious community as dreams of patriotism wither in the brutal reality of war, a poignant romance comes to its inevitable conclusion, and a group of common villagers are forced to endure the inevitable devastation war leaves in its wake.