Mandatory Ministries (Amendment) Bill

Sanctaria

Sanctaria

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sanctaria
Mandatory Ministries (Amendment) Bill:
1. Chapter 6, Section 6.4, Clause 23 shall be amended to read the following,
23. There will be an Executive Officer charged with the North Pacific's foreign affairs. They will ensure the continued operation of any embassies of the North Pacific and will report on events in the region.
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2. Chapter 6, Section 6.4, Clause 24 shall be deleted.

3. Chapter 6, Section 6.4, Clause 26 shall be deleted.

4. Chapter 6, Section 6.4, Clauses 25, 27, and 28 shall be renumbered 24, 25, and 26 respectively.

5. Chapter 6, Section 6.5, Clauses 29, 30, and 31 shall be renumbered 27, 28, and 29 respectively.

6. Chapter 6, Section 6.6, Clauses 32, 33, 34, and 35 shall be renumbered 30, 31, 32, and 33 respectively.

7. Chapter 6, Section 6.7, Clause 36 shall be renumbered 34.
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This is a bill I'm introducing on behalf of the cabinet. Basically what we're attempting to do is make cabinet operations more efficient by amending the Legal Code which regulates what officers the Delegate has to appoint.

First off, we'd like to merge the functions of Foreign Affairs and Communications. The current modus operandi is for the Minister for Foreign Affairs, or designated Ambassadors, to post a report on what TNP is currently up to, which is a large part of what Communications is asked to do in legislation. Since the MoFA is currently doing the job of MoC, we think it prudent to actually put this in law, so we're not put in a situation where two different Ministers are doing the same job.

We'd also like to abolish the condition to have a welcoming Minister. This has become a largely obsolete position now that there are scripts widely available, the TG system has been upgraded, and that the forum is much more easily navigated.

We intend to keep both Foreign Affairs and Defence as Mandatory Ministries, for a number of reasons, chiefly among those that failure for a Delegate to appoint these could result in serious negative consequences for the region if foreign relations and defence of the region are left to slip.

The bulk of the bill is mostly procedural, allowing for the rest of the sections to be renumbered. I have included in the spoiler below what we envision the section to look like following a successful passage of this bill.

Thoughts and comments are welcome.

Section 6.4: Mandatory Ministries:
23. There will be an Executive Officer charged with the North Pacific's foreign affairs. They will ensure the continued operation of any embassies of the North Pacific and will report on events in the region.
24. There will be an Executive Officer charged with military affairs. They will carry out such legal missions as are authorized by the Delegate, expressly or categorically.
25. An Executive Officer may sustain multiple roles defined by this Act.
26. The Regional Assembly may elect an Executive Officer should one of the roles defined by this act remain vacant for seven days or in connection with the Regional Assembly removing the Executive Officer charged with that role.
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I'm not sure it's necessary to have any mandatory ministries, myself - I can't imagine a delegate getting away with saying "Foreign Affairs? Yes, I think not."

But if we're going to have to have any, I would agree that FA and Defense make the most sense, and if we can't strike the whole thing, I think this looks pretty good as written. :P
 
flemingovia:
May we see the log of the Cabinet discussion over this, so that we can see the thinking of the current cabinet?
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That's something you'll have to ask the Delegate for, and I don't think the correct place to ask for it is in the Regional Assembly.

Edit: I just realised that I put our thinking in original post explaining why we'd like to amend the resolution.

I would also say that there's been very few official cabinet meetings, most of this has cropped up out of informal discussions made at different points during the past 8-10 weeks.
 
The thinking and discussion has also occurred over a period of time. And there has also been discussions in the assembly about the position of a Welcoming Minister and the view that it was unnecessary or too burdensome for one person who is not able to write or host a script.

Sanctaria summarises the cabinets thinking on this quite nicely. Communications largely is covered by the position of Foreign Affairs as it is, so we decided to merge/rename the two into one.
 
Sanctaria:
flemingovia:
May we see the log of the Cabinet discussion over this, so that we can see the thinking of the current cabinet?
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That's something you'll have to ask the Delegate for, and I don't think the correct place to ask for it is in the Regional Assembly.

Edit: I just realised that I put our thinking in original post explaining why we'd like to amend the resolution.

I would also say that there's been very few official cabinet meetings, most of this has cropped up out of informal discussions made at different points during the past 8-10 weeks.
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That's fine.

However, I DO think it is not unreasonable to ask for cabinet minutes when they result in a proposal being brought from the cabinet.

I am a bit old fashioned, but I would much rather see the cabinet meeting and discussing rather than ad-hoc discussions that seem to be taking place with no paper trail.

But whatever seems to work for you people, I suppose
 
It's not unreasonable, no, and I would agree, but this arose from informal discussions as opposed to an actual cabinet meeting. The logs would be scattered in various public and private IRC channels, amongst various peoples, going back to late May/early June.

But the gist of the discussion is what both I and McM have said, if that helps, and if logs can be found, I'm sure Jamie won't mind publishing them.
 
Sanctaria:
It's not unreasonable, no, and I would agree, but this arose from informal discussions as opposed to an actual cabinet meeting. The logs would be scattered in various public and private IRC channels, amongst various peoples, going back to late May/early June.

But the gist of the discussion is what both I and McM have said, if that helps, and if logs can be found, I'm sure Jamie won't mind publishing them.
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I do not think it is worth the trouble of seeking out logs. I am sure the discussion will come out in this thread anyway.
 
That's the hope.

To sum up, we'd like to merge the duties of Communications into Foreign Affairs, since FA is doing what Comms is supposed to do anyway, and we'd like to abolish the requirement of having a dedicated welcoming minister due to the the position becoming fairly obsolete these days.

The requirement to have both a FA Minister and a Defence Minister remains.
 
What was the original purpose in having Communications and FA be separate ministries? I seem to recall it's caused some issues for a while, where FA needed to publish an update that hadn't been written because Elu was inactive and couldn't write it on its own... but there's got to be a reason they were originally designed that way.*

Also, can scripts really replace welcoming entirely? Obviously they can handle telegramming new nations, but there's a lot to be said for a personal touch, PMing people to welcome them to the forum and encourage them to get involved, be available to answer questions, that kind of thing... I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm okay with it not being mandatory, but is it actually useless?

*I will accept "Eluvian quirks" as a reason, naturally, as it applies to much of the Constibillocode...
 
Under the current law you don't have to have a 'dedicated' welcoming minister you just need one of your ministers to be responsible for it.

I don't understand how welcoming is obsolete, Flem has been consistently highlighting how many newcomers leave with only a few posts. This could be viewed as a failure of the welcoming minister rather than of the natives themselves. If we had a very low activity level, and needed to draw new members in, wouldn't the welcoming minister be vital?

Regarding Communications, the monthly update is currently overlapping with MoFA, but MoC does have other things it should do: oversight of the media, and the publication of cabinet minutes.
 
I'm not sure why Communications was originally established.

I don't think welcoming is "useless", I just think it's become fairly obsolete, and scripts was just one of some reasons I gave above. As for the personal touch, I do think scripts can do that, at least as far as personalising the name of the nation receiving the telegram is concerned.

The general ease of navigation of the forum is also an indicator that it's becoming slightly unnecessary for us to have a Minister solely for telling people where to go and how to do things. Our FAQs are listed quite clearly, and between Admins and the Speaker's office welcoming new citizens or RA members respectively when they sign up, mandating that the Executive also appoint someone to add another round of "hello" seems a bit much.
 
Ninja'd.

Foreign Affairs work is about handling how we are seen abroad whereas Communications work is more about transparent governance and having an informed populace.

Internal Affairs work used to handle things between the government and the population, which included those things Silly said, which I feel are important, and also maintaining the list of citizens, which is currently done by the Speaker's office.
 
Sanctaria:
I'm not sure why Communications was originally established.

I don't think welcoming is "useless", I just think it's become fairly obsolete, and scripts was just one of some reasons I gave above. As for the personal touch, I do think scripts can do that, at least as far as personalising the name of the nation receiving the telegram is concerned.

The general ease of navigation of the forum is also an indicator that it's becoming slightly unnecessary for us to have a Minister solely for telling people where to go and how to do things. Our FAQs are listed quite clearly, and between Admins and the Speaker's office welcoming new citizens or RA members respectively when they sign up, mandating that the Executive also appoint someone to add another round of "hello" seems a bit much.
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I disagree really.

Scripts can be customized but it's not as effective as actually conversing with somebody.

If somebody is going to do the welcoming by scripts alone, that is still a big responsibility and the government would do well to keep a ministry for that role.
 
Chasmanthe:
Under the current law you don't have to have a 'dedicated' welcoming minister you just need one of your ministers to be responsible for it.

I don't understand how welcoming is obsolete, Flem has been consistently highlighting how many newcomers leave with only a few posts. This could be viewed as a failure of the welcoming minister rather than of the natives themselves. If we had a very low activity level, and needed to draw new members in, wouldn't the welcoming minister be vital?

Regarding Communications, the monthly update is currently overlapping with MoFA, but MoC does have other things it should do: oversight of the media, and the publication of cabinet minutes.
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I think I should be making it clear that we're not abolishing these positions. We're merging the duties of the MoC laid out in the Legal Code with that of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and we're deleting the section making a welcoming Minister mandatory. Just because they'll no longer be listed in the Legal Code doesn't mean they won't be utilised, it's just taking away the mandatory nature of these appointments.

A welcome Minister is considered unnecessary at this time, yes, but if an argument can be made to the Delegate that one needs to be appointed, I don't think he'd refuse. All this amendment would do is take away the mandatory aspect of appointing Minister for X and Y.
 
Chasmanthe:
Sanctaria:
I'm not sure why Communications was originally established.

I don't think welcoming is "useless", I just think it's become fairly obsolete, and scripts was just one of some reasons I gave above. As for the personal touch, I do think scripts can do that, at least as far as personalising the name of the nation receiving the telegram is concerned.

The general ease of navigation of the forum is also an indicator that it's becoming slightly unnecessary for us to have a Minister solely for telling people where to go and how to do things. Our FAQs are listed quite clearly, and between Admins and the Speaker's office welcoming new citizens or RA members respectively when they sign up, mandating that the Executive also appoint someone to add another round of "hello" seems a bit much.
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I disagree really.

Scripts can be customized but it's not as effective as actually conversing with somebody.

If somebody is going to do the welcoming by scripts alone, that is still a big responsibility and the government would do well to keep a ministry for that role.
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Again, scripts are just one of many reasons.
 
I like the idea of removing 'mandatory ministries' in terms of compacting the government bureaucracy.

I would like to see MoFA and MoD enshrined as required functions of the executive branch though.

As for a cabinet in general, that 'advise and consent' form of a Privy Council (per se) is entirely at the pleasure of the Delegate when you get right down to it.
 
Romanoffia:
I would like to see MoFA and MoD enshrined as required functions of the executive branch though.
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The current draft would see that MoFA and MoD remain mandatory ministries.
 
If we want to balance cabinet flexibility with a legal obligation to ensure certain functions are performed we could use a constriction along the lines of "The Delegate shall be empowered and obligated to appoint such Ministers as required to perform the functions of ..." i.e., as long as things gets done, any structure is fine.

We could combine that with specific mandated essential ministries, but I don't think that would be necessary.
 
We believe that cabinet flexibility is most important and that the appointment of Ministers to maintain our defence forces and foreign relations should be the only requirement made of the Delegate in this regard.
 
Chasmanthe:
I don't understand how welcoming is obsolete, Flem has been consistently highlighting how many newcomers leave with only a few posts. This could be viewed as a failure of the welcoming minister rather than of the natives themselves. If we had a very low activity level, and needed to draw new members in, wouldn't the welcoming minister be vital?
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Isn't there a Minister of Culture? If not, then that could exist to not only get the new people involved but also get people involved and have fun events to keep activity levels high.
 
Funkadelia:
Chasmanthe:
I don't understand how welcoming is obsolete, Flem has been consistently highlighting how many newcomers leave with only a few posts. This could be viewed as a failure of the welcoming minister rather than of the natives themselves. If we had a very low activity level, and needed to draw new members in, wouldn't the welcoming minister be vital?
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Isn't there a Minister of Culture? If not, then that could exist to not only get the new people involved but also get people involved and have fun events to keep activity levels high.
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The Culture Ministry has previously been tasked with welcoming, however as it's only an Executive Office responsible for welcoming that's mandated, the Delegate has decided to give McMasterdonia the welcoming portfolio in addition to his MoFA responsibilities.

The Delegate has chosen not to appoint a new Minister for Culture and Entertainment. Though that's kind of ... not supposed to be in this thread.
 
Culture and Entertainment is not a Mandatory Ministry, though I think it was a good one.

I don't think Welcoming as an action is obsolete, I just don't think we need a Minister to be appointed to have that position. Chas raises some good points about Communications, but I think one could reasonably expect a Delegate to do those things, and that was not the original intention of Communications as a Ministry, it evolved into that with the directives released by Eluvatar and myself as Delegates of the region.

Communications was primarily responsible for the writing of the Foreign Update, and the Foreign Affairs Minister did something else... like maintain embassies or something. Communications now incorporates different responsibilities such as the Wire, which could reasonably be carried out by private individuals, and the transparency things that could be the responsibility of the Delegate or whoever is asked to share cabinet minutes. I would also even say that sharing cabinet meeting logs was something introduced not that long ago, within the last year. I don't recall seeing any when Blue Wolf, Grosse etc was Delegate, though maybe years before it was done. It is however reasonable for the cabinet to share them when meetings occur.
 
This bill is a step in the right direction. Personally, I would go a step further and abolish all mandatory ministries. The Delegate should be provided with the flexibility to tailor the Executive to their particular plans and way of doing business. Though I seriously doubt any Delegate would do away with Foreign Affairs, they should be able to do so if they wanted to.

Whether welcoming is important or obsolete is completely irrelevant to this bill, and is diverting the debate. Requiring that a Minister of Welcoming exists provides no guarantee whatsoever that the Executive is going to put any actual effort into welcoming; the Delegate could very well appoint someone as a filler, or direct them to work on other projects outside their portfolio. Likewise, not mandating a Minister of Welcoming does not mean the Delegate cannot prioritize that area if necessary. Same applies for all other ministries.

Ministries should only be legislated if there is a need to grant a specific power (say, a common example, signing of treaties) to a Minister. Our current mandatory ministry legislation is not doing that. Instead, it is dictating Executive policy, in a way that is inflexible, restrictive, and overall ineffective. Executive policy should be dictated by the Delegate, who should be given discretion in allocating responsibility and delegating their powers.

Even though this bill is not as far reaching as I would like, as I said earlier it is an improvement over the current situation, which is why it has my support.
 
I agree with r3n in everything he has said. The entire mandatory ministries section should be struck - but failing that, this is at least an improvement.
 
The Minister for Defence is mentioned in the NPA Doctrine, which was one of the reasons we wanted to keep it. As we've said, there has been cases before where Ministers have not been appointed to fill those two roles (Defence and FA).

I think this is ready to move to formal Debate - though I guess as Sanctaria has the OP he has to decide that (we wrote the proposal together :P)
 
There has been some great debate here. I think that many of you have the right idea but with the caveat that I also agree that the MoD/MoFA positions are the only compulsory positions required. Or at least, some equivalent.
 
Having moved into Formal Debate, this bill will reach the queue in 5 days, whereupon the text of the bill will be finalized and it will have two days to acquire a second before a vote will be scheduled.
 
Formal debate has ended, and no further changes may be made to the text of the proposal. A vote on this matter will begin on 2013-08-04.
 
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