Another time-honoured staple of Australian Public Service life, the office cubicle, is under threat as a group of Canberra bureaucrats prepare to tear down their partitions.
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IP Australia, the outfit that brought us the Lego wall in its Canberra offices, is now breaking with decades of tradition and moving a group of its workers to a hot-desk arrangement, taking them away from the fixed workstations that most public servants have used their entire working lives.
The concept is not new to private sector workers, but government employers have been reluctant to force their workers to abandon the security of fixed desks, with their familiar coffee stains and family photos.
However, the intellectual property outfit in Woden wants to shake those dusty traditions up and has moved one of its teams, called "Rights in One", into a new way of working.
It's all about "agile principles" at the team's new work space, according to the team's "product owner", Geoff Sadlier. (They do job titles a little differently there, too.)
"We're all familiar with the current cubicle style layout of the office," Mr Sadlier said in the official video promoting the pilot program.
"What we asked here at RIO [Rights in One] was whether there was a more flexible, more agile way of us working together and with the flexible work environment pilot, I think the answer is definitely yes."
Another manager, Anke Aggio, said the team's staff would be "de-coupled" from their desks. "They won't necessarily own a desk," she said.
"They will choose the work setting that best meets their needs for the day, whether it be an open, collaborative space, whether it be a focused space or whether it be an informal space."
It works like this: the workers show up in the morning, and choose a workstation according to the day they are expecting or just how they are feeling.
At the end of the day, or at the end of a task, the desk is packed up, laptop and other equipment put back into storage or taken home with the desk left clean for the next user.
"They need a mobile IT solution and they need to be supported by a fully ergonomically adjustable workstation," Ms Aggio said.
You don't have to stay stuck in an office rut at IP Australia; there are phone booths, collaboration pods, breakout areas and even "the oasis", where the Rights in One team can kick back, relax and just have a chat.
IP Australia is a self-funding agency that does very nicely financially, and many cash-strapped public service workplaces will baulk at the price of the laptops, monitors, phone set-ups and adjustable furniture needed to make the hot-desking dream come through.
But its director-general, Patricia Kelly, says it's all about fostering innovation.
"One of the ways we're doing that is looking at our own physical environment and how we might improve it," she said.
