Sonia Powell is a director general with Public Services and Procurement Canada with big responsibilities, like helping remake the whole federal workplace. She doesn't have an office or a permanent desk, but works with a tablet and a cellphone tucked into a little Guess knapsack, the kind a kid might use for pencils, except she supervises 245 people. One day she works at home, one day she visits one of four main department sites in the Ottawa area.
"What does 'modern' mean to public servants?" she asks, more or less answering her own question. So, dear mandarin, the future has arrived.
We're deep inside Place du Portage, Phase III, Tower A, the kind of government 'complex' that, if there is a God, will never, ever be built again in the capital, a concrete coal mine into which thousands of workers disappear daily and visitors play private versions of Lost in Space.
Powell, 49, a public servant since 1993, is conducting a tour of an "activity-based workplace," the kind of office design the federal government is piloting at 19 sites across Canada, including 11 in Ottawa. It has several virtues: It better suits a paperless, wired world, creates great common spaces, is cheaper to build and encourages people to work at home.
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