Magicality City, August 12th, 2014
Progress report and appointment of new Minister
Greetings all,
This was originally meant as a midterm report on the affairs of the Executive Government. Regrettably it was delayed because of my announced vacation and then my unannounced absence last week. Nonetheless, it is useful to provide an overview of what the government has achieved these past three months, as well as set priorities for the remaining month.
Executive Staff
The Executive Staff was launched at the beginning of this term, and since then it has been very successful in providing citizens, new and old, with opportunities to get involved in the Executive Government. The four Ministries participating in the Executive Staff, Home Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Communications, and Culture, have benefited tremendously from the contributions of their staff members. The Executive Staff has also proven to be very useful in attracting members to join our forum community, and encouraging them to remain involved.
Home Affairs
The work of the Ministry of Home Affairs can be separated naturally into game-side and forum-side activities. Game-side, the Ministry has drafted and set up six automated telegrams, in addition to the standard welcoming telegram provided by the game, addressing new and active nations in the region and inviting them to join the forum and government. The Ministry has also manually been contacting nations in the region, either through their responses to the automated telegrams, or by monitoring national activity. Since the beginning of the term, we have sent, manually and through scripts, close to 10,000 telegrams. In addition to telegramming, the Ministry works to maintain an active RMB, with frequent announcements of forum activities. Forum-side, the Ministry oversaw a reorganization of Port Thel to streamline information for new members, and has established and is operating a mentoring program contacting new members and offering assistance and information on the forum.
Foreign Affairs
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs continues to maintain an efficient Diplomatic Service, which represents us in more than 40 regions in the world and broadly distributes all of our publications. The Ministry successfully completed the negotiation of the WALL treaty, which had been ongoing since last term, and has continued to produce statements as necessary for our diplomatic interests.
Communications
The Ministry of Communications has successfully launched, as I am sure you have all noticed, our new regional newspaper, The Northern Lights. The Northern Lights employ many of our citizens as writers, and their contributions span areas of both regional and interregional interest. All issues are broadly distributed in our embassies and in-game through dispatches and posts in the NS forum. Currently in its third issue, the newspaper has been very well received, and has established itself as one of the major publications in NationStates.
World Assembly Affairs
The Ministry of World Assembly Affairs has been creating forum polls for the majority of resolutions that reach voting stage. Polls are created well in advance of resolutions going to vote, which has allowed me to vote on most resolutions (with the exception of those taking place during my vacation and my absence last week) within one hour of them going to vote. Voting early has allowed us to maximize our impact on the outcome of all WA votes, through exploiting the so-called "lemming effect". The Ministry has been producing and distributing analysis and voting recommendations for the various resolutions through the Information for WA Voters program. Together with advertising both forum-side and game-side by the Ministry, these measures has resulted in increased participation in forum polls, as well as an increase by 50% of WA nations in the region that vote on resolutions. Together with Home Affairs, the Ministry has also worked to increase the number of World Assembly nations in the region, as well as those endorsing the Delegate. Thanks to these efforts, despite the sharp decrease in population all of NationStates has been experiencing, the Delegate’s endorsements have consistently remained around 450, with an endorsement rate exceeding 76%, by far the highest among all GCRs.
Defense
The North Pacific Army has completed more than 15 missions since the beginning of the term, including both offensive and defensive operations. The Army has conducted joint training missions with all of our treaty allies that have a military, and has remained in deployment virtually non-stop since the beginning of the term. Together with more systematic recruitment efforts (coordinated with Home Affairs), these have resulted in consistent deployments of more than 10 units for reinforcements, and more than 5 units for updaters. We have twice equalized and eventually broken our record deployment, with 16 units participating in Communist Beach. This makes the North Pacific Army the strongest and most active military among all GCRs, and also one of the largest and best organized military forces in the entire world. In addition to training missions, the North Pacific Army has successfully lead an interregional coalition that conquered and refounded the region of Nazi Europe. Nazi Europe is now owned by The North Pacific, and our flag will fly over the region forever, marking our strong commitment to the cause against the spread of Nazism in NationStates.
Culture
The Ministry of Culture has organized a range of cultural activities, both on the forum and in the region. These have included the House of Cards theme week in June, the Regional Identity Crisis, Stories of The North Pacific, and RMB Trivia. Thanks to efforts by members of the Ministry staff, we have also seen activities such as the creation of a new regional map, the Tennis Tour, and increased activity in our roleplay section.
The term has so far seen consistent activity from all five of our Ministries. Regrettably, the Executive Government has slowed down during the last couple of weeks. This has been caused primarily because of my own forced absence, and I take full responsibility for it. In the remaining month, I expect that we will overcome this deceleration. There are a number of outstanding projects that I would like to see completed before the end of the term. Below, I outline the priorities for each Ministry for the next month:
Home Affairs
-- Overhaul of FAQ guides and information factbooks used in-game.
-- More systematic mentoring for members joining the forum.
Foreign Affairs
-- The Ministry is currently in the process of negotiating an interregional treaty whose nature I cannot reveal at this point. Concluding the negotiations and introducing the treaty to the RA before the end of the term is the priority of the Ministry.
Communications
-- Publication of two more issues of The Northern Lights.
World Assembly Affairs
-- Launch of interregional advertising campaign for our World Assembly department in the NationStates site and forum, to attract a wealthy community of authors to our forum.
-- Implementation and operation of the WALL treaty. This has been considerably delayed because of the very slow ratification process in Balder, one of our co-signatories. As soon as Balder completes the ratification, implementation of the treaty in coordination with our treaty partners will be the priority of this Ministry.
Defense
-- Continuation of joint training operations with allies.
-- Break record deployment once more.
Culture
-- Game of Thrones theme week.
-- Implementation and operation of The North Pacific Union.
Legislative Agenda
-- The Executive Government will be introducing bills to reform our criminal code and our citizenship and membership laws.
Last but not least, I would like to announce the appointment of The Democratic Republic of Tomb as Minister of Home Affairs. Tomb has been one of the major contributors to the Ministry during the term, being one of our most prolific recruiters and single-handedly running the mentoring program for several weeks of this term. Having worked with Tomb in several other departments of government, I am absolutely confident that he will perform remarkably as Minister. Tomb is replacing Democratic Donkeys, who had announced his impending resignation from the Ministry of Home Affairs in late July. I would like to thank DD for his invaluable service to the Ministry. Thanks to his and his staff’s efforts, the Ministry of Home Affairs has gone from non-existent to one of the most active Ministries in the Executive Government.
Sincerely,
~r3naissanc3r
Delegate of The North Pacific
