What we need to do

I'm sure most of you have noticed, (then again maybe not) that activity has dropped off significantly in the past week or so. This is not limited to the public, often there could be 16 or so people online, but nothing is being discussed. I see this as largely a failure of the government to act. If we are not leading the region, and engaging in discussion, it is unlikely for others to do so. If we don't stir the pot, nobody else will.

To be frank, the only real work that I have seen get done is in the Defence, and Foreign Affairs department. Mahaj has done some work in World Assembly Affairs, but Internal Affairs and Communications have been severely lacking. Unless work, is presumably going on behind the scenes (doubtful), this is not a good thing.

I have discussed this with Tim and some others today and we have come up with some ideas.

1: Ditch Internal Affairs

What does it do? Is it needed ? Is there better use for the minister than internal affairs. We could replace this with a Minister for Culture and Entertainment. The North Pacific has a rich history and culture, it could be this ministers reponsibility to help enhance this, and perhaps even plan joint cultural events.

If it is absolutely necessary for Internal Affairs to be kept as a ministry, we may want to reconsider what its responsibilities are. This is no fault of Romanoffia's, I believe that the responsibilities of Internal Affaris beyond maintaining the help desk is small.

2: Get a Foreign Update Out

The Government was elected on the basis of maintaining and active foreign affairs department. Tim has reorganized the department, has got the ambassadors to do their diplomatic reports, everything is at full readiness. We really need to get a foreign update out.

This may mean that we need to reconsider the relevance of the TNP-wire and a possible split of government positions. While Ator maintained the TNP-Wire impeccably, it has slipped since then. Either we need to think of articles to put into this wire quickly, or we consider appointing an official editor of the paper to be responsible for it.

While I like the articles. I am unsure how many people when viewing our foreign update, actually click on the links to read the articles. I'm not sure if there is someway to check the amount of viewers for each page, but we might get them to know more about the goings on in TNP if we actually write the update out in full, instead of just links.

3: Better use of the Deputies System

Deputies are appointed for a reason. They want to get experience in the running of the government (ideally). Scandigrad has helped me a lot as a deputy, though his activity has been somewhat sketchy recently. I recall talking to a former deputy, who told me that she was bored shit-less. As our deputies, we need to give them opportunities to get involved and assist us in our duties.

4: Issues with the Council of Five itself

We have not addressed these issues, and I have tried to bring them up for discussion on several occasions to no avail.

Issues with it are:

a) Ministers are elected, but no guarantee of activity. If appointed a Minister can be easily removed for inactivity. How can this be dealt with in this elected system? Frankly I feel if a minister is inactive, a Delegate should sack that minister. It should not be a Co5 decision, the Delegate leads the executive.

b) Short terms - constant elections- informed electorate
To what extent do short terms affect our ability to serve as ministers? Do they at all? Should they be longer, or do shorter terms make us more accountable?

To be honest I don't think it makes a difference at all. Despite the sending out of telegrams and the blurbs and whatever else, the region wide electorate is still massively uninformed. Citizens I believe vote based on name recognition. The fact that Gov was almost elected last time, shows that anything is possible when you have region wide voting. He is a name that is recognised, and if he continues to stand, I believe his votes will continue to be steady as he becomes more recognised.

Secondly it is virtually impossible for a new person to get his way into a ministry, besides becoming a deputy. I don't want the Council of Five to become an oligarchy, with every 4-8 months the Delegacy switching between us as the recognised names in the region. Whereas before, appointment provided new people that opportunity and foot in the door to learn more, and to prove themselves.

If I was to resign today as Defence Minister, the most capable and respected soldier in the north pacific army, would have to fight an election, as a new individual, an unrecognised name individually to earn his opportunity to serve. I consider this to be really hard, if not impossible. Effectively, unless we enforce term limits, it will only get harder for new candidates to unseat us. If we are to retain new citizens we have to provide them the opportunity to get involved into the government and leadership of the region.

So how do we make the region more informed? Do we stop going for a region wide vote, and vote from the forum instead? Do we put names before the assembly for confirmation? Primarily the concern being is that new people, who are recognised internally on the forum for their hard work, but lack that renown inter-regionally won't be able to get into office.

5) Engagement with the region

How can the Co5 help the region to be more invigorated and active? What can we do? Do we need to appoint a Co5 spokesperson to get the government moving again. What agenda does the Co5 have? What do we want to implement? We need to pave the way for new policy and a brighter TNP.

I tend to agree with the Ministry Immigration and Internal Affairs point you make. It is a nebulous position without a specific detailed mission as to what this Ministry is actually supposed to accomplish.

Currently, other than keeping an eye on various comings, goings and boring statistics to suss out any odd things that may catch my attention, there really isn't much beyond that. In all reality, replacing the MoIIA with a Ministry of Culture with a specific mission statement would be more useful.

I also agree with your other points as well.

We should also ramp up our intel capacity and procedures, especially concentrating on developing and placing assets, and gathering as much overt information as possible; and to develop a rating system/fact book on specific regions of interests (such as a who-is-who of 'regions of interest', and to find out what is going on in said regions). Gathering information in a benign and somewhat open way is much easier in the current NS environment. Should problems arise in the future, having our 'assets' well placed and a specific information gathering methodology already in place is a good idea.

Thanks for responding Romanoffia. I agree with your points as well. I do think that we need to get things moving here again.
Conversations indicate people do blame the government. Recalls will happen if we do not get back on track.

I think replacing IA with culture is a good idea.

I think that the delegate shouldn't have the power to randomly sack a minister, it should be a full Co5 vote.

I would like the MoIIA to draft a welcome message for sending to new TNP nations.

I'm working on materials for an update.

1: Ditch Internal Affairs
What does it do? Is it needed ? Is there better use for the minister than internal affairs. We could replace this with a Minister for Culture and Entertainment. The North Pacific has a rich history and culture, it could be this ministers responsibility to help enhance this, and perhaps even plan joint cultural events.

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I have huge support for this idea. I honestly haven't seen MoIIA doing anything. I don't blame Romanoffia for this, because he is indeed active. I just don't see MoIIA actually having a job to do, most of the time. I definitely think that IA should be scrapped for a Minister of Culture. We do indeed have a rich history and culture, and I think that we do need to embrace that.

2: Get a Foreign Update Out
The Government was elected on the basis of maintaining and active foreign affairs department. Tim has reorganized the department, has got the ambassadors to do their diplomatic reports, everything is at full readiness. We really need to get a foreign update out.

[snip about inactive Communications Head]
[snip about how nobody actually clicks those links]

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Firstly, Mcmasterdonia. Thank You for the kind words. Much appreciated

Anyway, Yes. We do -need- to get this Foreign Update out. Eluvatar, if you don't have time to write it then just tell me and I'll throw a good update in an hour or two. It doesn't take that long.

Now. Two criticisms of the Foreign Update. The first one is the big criticism that I have is that our update kind of sucks. Let's be honest here, Most people don't click those links. All we're sending out is a document full of a bunch of links. If I'm a Foreign Region and I look at this.. I yawn... We need to just post all of the articles within the update or perhaps give a semi-large blurb and a "link to the full article here". It would look much nicer than a pile of links, and I think that people might actually be interested by the TNP Update then.

Second Criticism... Our Foreign Update is boring... Like extremely boring... I'm our FA Minister and I'm bored by our own update... I would propose making it more fun and enjoyable. We complain very often that we're not a cultural region? Perhaps that is because we have a very non-cultural feel to it. If you look at all the cultural regions, they have exciting updates. Embassy Contests, IRC quotes, Shiny banners, fun articles. Why can't we have some shiny banners. I want us to have shiny banners god damn it (hell I'll even design them). Essentially what I'm saying is that TNP needs to have more interesting updates with stuff like memes, contests, IRC quotes, jokes, fun facts, trivia, etc... And to those of you that are going to gasp and be like "Oh my gosh it's too informal". That's fine, but I'd prefer to have a region that is known for being a political clusterfuck and more for a cultural joint.

3: Better use of the Deputies System
Deputies are appointed for a reason. They want to get experience in the running of the government (ideally). Scandigrad has helped me a lot as a deputy, though his activity has been somewhat sketchy recently. I recall talking to a former deputy, who told me that she was bored shit-less. As our deputies, we need to give them opportunities to get involved and assist us in our duties

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^This
I think we need to definitely give stuff to our Deputies to do. If you don't have anything to give them, then think of something. I think our Junior Ministers should be allowed to participate in the Government and see what it's like. Yes, I do realize that most of our Deputies are already experienced people.. but still. Let's give them something to do okay? I know McMasterdonia and I have been giving stuff to our respectful Deputies. Mahaj and Unibot are doing.. stuff? I'm not sure what Romanoffia is doing with his Deputy... and does Eluvatar even have a deputy O.o

Issues with it are:
a) Ministers are elected, but no guarantee of activity. If appointed a Minister can be easily removed for inactivity. How can this be dealt with in this elected system? Frankly I feel if a minister is inactive, a Delegate should sack that minister. It should not be a Co5 decision, the Delegate leads the executive.

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Inactivity is indeed a problem. I feel like we should honor elections to an extent, but if your Minister is inactive.. You sack him/her. I believe that although this should be allowed to be a Co5 Decision, the Delegate does not to take control of the Cabinet and cut off the inactive parts.

b) Short terms - constant elections- informed electorate
To what extent do short terms affect our ability to serve as ministers? Do they at all? Should they be longer, or do shorter terms make us more accountable?
[the voter base doesn't read anything snippet]
[elected by name snippet].

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I think that we need to extend the Term Length of the Council of Five. One problem with the constantly switching Council is that you never give the current Council that much time to bond as a group and work together too well. You keep just thrusting a new group in to squabble for a month until you replace them

Voting. Most of the region doesn't read the Blurbs. As well as this, you can completely bullshit your blurb and still get in. With such an uninformed voter base, what you are getting is that those people that have been heard of get voted in.
Let's look at who was elected to Co5 this time around.
Eluvatar: Delegate, Has Been Here for ages. Is on the WFE. Easily Recognized
McMasterdonia: Former Vice-Delegate. Was on the WFE. RMB Active.
Tim: Known throughout NS for raiding. RMB active. An easy to remember name.
Romanoffia: Has been here forever, and everyone knows who he is.
Mahaj: Known throughout NS for defending.

The Region Voting system really doesn't work too well. No matter what Eluvatar might think, most people don't read the blurbs. Hell, I didn't read the blurbs. I voted off of who I thought would be good for each Ministry.

Which is yet another problem. You have people getting voted in randomly, and not by what office they might be best at. Elections should definitely be taken more as a "What Ministry would he/she be good for" affair. I think a potential solution would be to cut the main region out of the vote, and constrict the vote to Forum Citizens and RA Members.

Also, a concern is that you will get people that aren't qualified at all onto Ministry positions. The big two where this is a concern is Foreign Affairs, and even more.. Defense.

Defense is a huge concern. That Minister is to lead the NPA, and if you get someone that has no idea what they're doing.. well then you're not going to have a good time. I would propose that the Minister of Defense be elected within the NPA and with Recommendation from the previous MoD (in the case of stepping down). It's extremely hard to deny that most of the nations in TNP know barely anything about the way R/D works, or how an R/D Army is run. I don't think that having people with no knowledge of R/D voting for MoD is a very good idea. I think that, at least MoD, should definitely be moved out of the entirety of the vote and into a vote (perhaps amongst Cit and RA? at least?). Have MoD be it's own campaign entirely, so you can elect someone capable to that position. We've been lucky to have a great MoD like McMasterdonia, but I think that we need to look to the future and prepare for potential problems.

Eluvatar:

I would like the MoIIA to draft a welcome message for sending to new TNP nations.

I'm working on materials for an update.

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I'll draft up a good welcome message for new nations ASAP that will help new nations to get oriented and encourage them to participate. I'll float you the finished product to see if there is anything you would like to add.

We could morph the MoIIA into a Ministry of Culture and perhaps split up the 'internal affairs' (such items as internal security and keeping an eye on unusual events within the region) functions amongst those ministries that have existing resources to accomplish that mission.

Or, we could take a look at creating a specific detailed mission for the MoIIA (by that I mean create a specific set of detailed functions to that particular ministry to fulfill) so that the Ministry actually has a set of specific functions and an agenda to fulfill.

If this last point strikes up any interest with the rest of the council, I'd like to also float a defined mission for the MoIIA (or whatever we decide to call that particular ministry if we change its name and function) that actually accomplishes something.

Romanoffia:

Eluvatar:

I would like the MoIIA to draft a welcome message for sending to new TNP nations.

I'm working on materials for an update.

Click to expand...

I'll draft up a good welcome message for new nations ASAP that will help new nations to get oriented and encourage them to participate. I'll float you the finished product to see if there is anything you would like to add.

We could morph the MoIIA into a Ministry of Culture and perhaps split up the 'internal affairs' (such items as internal security and keeping an eye on unusual events within the region) functions amongst those ministries that have existing resources to accomplish that mission.

Or, we could take a look at creating a specific detailed mission for the MoIIA (by that I mean create a specific set of detailed functions to that particular ministry to fulfill) so that the Ministry actually has a set of specific functions and an agenda to fulfill.

If this last point strikes up any interest with the rest of the council, I'd like to also float a defined mission for the MoIIA (or whatever we decide to call that particular ministry if we change its name and function) that actually accomplishes something.

Click to expand...

I like that suggestion. MoIIA is definitely one of our less clear Ministries, in that we don't know what it's really supposed to do. Setting some clear lines would be nice.

That is also true.

Just an Update:

I've decided that at this point, TNP Reputation in The World is more important than position and have started writing our Way Past-Due Foreign Update. If I can have people PM me with stuff for it, then I shall add that in. Right now it's going to be fairly basic stuff.

okay Tim

Alright Tim, I'll send you what I've written

Thank You.