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When Stéphanie Poliquin started her public service career in 1988 at what was then known as Public Works Canada, she said “everything was orange. And dusty, and thick.”

In an interview last fall, she recalled the days of filing cabinets almost too tall to reach, and furniture too heavy to move into different layouts when it came time for brainstorming between bureaucrats.

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Now a vice-president with the Public Service Commission, Poliquin’s office is a far cry from the one she occupied 30 years ago, thanks in large part to a federal public service initiative called Workplace 2.0, introduced in 2012. Poliquin works at 22 Eddy St. in Gatineau, a building that boasts glass walls, green space and “collaboration areas” with couches and stools.

“You get out of your little cubicle to engage in conversation,” she said. “For us, it’s the new normal.”

But modern as it might seem compared to what Poliquin jokingly called “the orange days of government” decades ago, Workplace 2.0 was recently shelved after feedback in favour of a new initiative built around the next generation of federal public servants.