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It is truly a great pleasure that I announce my candidacy for delegate and share my vision for the future of TNP with you all today! Before diving in, I would like to share with you some background. Just over three years ago I recall jumping into DMs with then Delegate Pallaith learning my lesson in regards to an argument over a controversial World Assembly proposal. At the time I was nothing more than a brand new staffer in the Ministry of World Assembly Affairs under the guidance of the sitting Minister, Sil Dorsett.
Before long, I would be appointed Deputy Minister where my near two and a half year long service to the ministry leadership began. During this time as Deputy Minister, I met a plethora of fantastic people who gave me experiences from all walks of NS. I gained experience in every WA facet under the sun, from IFV writing and mass TG use to more complex lobbying strategies. This eventually culminated in my appointment to Minister of World Assembly Affairs under Delegate Siwale, a position I held for about one and a half years. During my tenure, my staff and I created and distributed hundreds of IFVs (Information for Voters) which helped shape the current landscape of the World Assembly as we see it today. We witnessed some of the first resolutions being passed by WA Ministry leadership, GAR #423 (authored by yours truly) and GAR #426 (authored by then Deputy Minister Stoskavanya). Later into my service as Minister, I authored GAR #460: Astronomical Data Repository, which upon its passage became the most supported World Assembly Resolution in NationStates history. A record that was later broken in the Security Council, however remains unbroken in the General Assembly to this day. In mid-2019, I would see my final term as MoWAA, finishing my service by helping to establish the Senior World Assembly Consultants, a group similar to Foreign Affairs’s “Senior Diplomats”, in which I became one of its first members.
At the end of that term, I moved from the World Assembly desk to the Foreign Affairs desk as I was appointed to Minister of Foreign Affairs under Delegate McMasterdonia. I served two terms in this position where I hosted a total restructuring and updating of the Foreign Affairs Ministry logs, and assisted Delegate McM in launching the World Factbook Project. The World Factbook Project has proven to be a largely successful and intelligent approach to documenting NationStates history and providing a significant amount of information about regions we have relations with and regions of interest. During my second term, I worked on behalf of Delegate McMasterdonia to negotiate with representatives from Lazarus to broker a Non-Aggression Pact, formally known as The Incorporated Rum Pact. My service as Minister of Foreign Affairs provided me with invaluable experience to further cement my lobbying skillset, introduce me to nuances within gameplay, and knowledge on how to lead negotiations with prospective allies and partners throughout the NationStates community. To bring this introduction to a close, I would like to thank all those who have helped me along my journey. From my Deputy Ministers and staffers who assisted me up to this point over the years, to those who have advised and taught me, I would not be half the minister and player I am without you all.
To begin, I am pleased to present the policy and goals I have constructed drawing from my own experience and utilizing the assistance of other major players for the External Affairs Ministries - Defense, Foreign Affairs, and World Assembly Affairs.
Defense:
- A general updating of documents and catching up of records that have fallen out of date over the past terms.
- I have recently been part of an updating effort which is a great first step. The following steps from this are to ensure all documentation now and going into the future will be routinely checked and updated so as to keep training documentation current.
- The creation of active recruiting techniques in order to increase the amount of active soldiers and draw additional activity into the Army
- Home Affairs will be instrumental in the employment of various advertising techniques to attract potential soldiers.
- This will be followed up with hosting joint operations and additional tagging to help attract attention and publicize the NPA. This will require an active MoD and involved WAD, a role I will take up by learning and picking up additional R&D skills, assisting with training, and leading additional Ops as needed.
- Additional training and raising the bar for officers and experienced soldiers
- Reworking the structure of admittance to our officer core and requiring a higher standard of knowledge of advanced tactics will go a long way for ensuring the quality of officers and knowledge of soldiers moving through the ranks.
World Assembly Affairs:
- Continue efficiency on the procurement and steady execution of IFVs and evaluations of upcoming WA proposals
- Over the last term, the ministry has done a great job at getting IFVs out in a timely manner, however more diversity in authorship and contribution will help improve the already great quality and provide different perspectives into the WA.
- Focus on proactive lobbying and working with UCRs in order to secure votes
- UCRs are very receptive to lobbying, especially when given a chance to voice their concerns and feel respected. We must communicate with these UCRs, and look for additional stacking or stomping ability where possible.
- This will function by integrating with FA to work together towards targeting regions who share a passion for the WA and wish to grow in their understanding and involvement in the World Assembly
- We have an increasing amount of authors now within our very own Executive staff, and as such we must work to further accommodate these rising WA players.
- Create Proposal drafting and brainstorming/idea sharing sections within our exec discord and on the forums as well as utilize those already established.
- Encourage more work with WALL authors and the knowledge base we support there, especially for authors and aspiring staffers who wish to gain additional experience
Foreign Affairs:
- The creation of oversight committees who deal with either UCR or GCR focus and exist to assist current diplomats and solve staffing issues as turnover ensues.
- These committees will be staffed with experienced players and Senior Diplomats to act as an advising body to diplomats as well as a physical reminder for diplomats to ensure their work gets done
- In the case active diplomats resigning or otherwise going inactive, these committees will work as pools to be able to rapidly fill vacancies or stand in as needed to make sure we dont let any regions fall through the cracks
- A two pronged UCR Outreach program that addresses both FA and WA
- The World Assembly is TNP’s most public strength where we address the entire NS community multiple times a week. Using the WA as a driving force here will allow for us to unite UCRs interested in the WA and willing to work to better their programs and influence us to better ours
- Combine efforts of the world factbook project to help the UCR outreach program to bring more unique UCRs to light
- I intend to keep this fairly open ended due to the experience I have gained heading the program over the last term and a half, items like UCR stability and apathy have become a recurring issue we must learn to deal with
- Continuing to update and post World Factbook Project pages as we finish off all of our currently embassies regions
External affairs is the lifeblood of our public image as a region. The actions of our World Assembly Affairs team and Army are witnessed throughout all of NationStates, and our Foreign Affairs team facilitates our relations and communications with not only those regions we hold close, but the entirety of NationStates. Behind all of this however, is the Internal Affairs (Home Affairs, Culture, Communications, and Radio), whose functions are so integral to the success of this region, their absence would result in the demise of not only the External Affairs team but near all functions this region performs. Therefore without further delay, I proudly present my Internal Affairs policy and goals for the upcoming term.
Home Affairs:
- Continue the rotational scheduling that Minister Nimarya employed to ensure operations continue running smoothly and burn out of any staffers or deputies is avoided.
- Conduct an update of materials that have become outdated on the forums and gameside for the sake of new players and upcoming citizens within TNP
- Increase recruitment efforts across the board for ministries in need of additional hands. This will be particularly effective in Defense and other Internal Affairs programs where proper staffing is so crucial
- Telegrams have already been created for the WA and FA, however we need to do much more work for ministries who need additional recruitment as well.
- Finish the implementation of the cards program that has freshly been introduced and finish some card budgeting tweaks (Scroll down to see a full breakdown on how I intend to implement cards on a grand scale)
Culture:
- The RolePlay Reel is a great opportunity to showcase the RP happenings in TNP and gives RPers a chance to express themselves and introduce others to RP here in TNP
- This is a great opportunity to recruit new people to RP from locally and abroad in the greater NationStates community
- Joint events, such as the upcoming 2020 RP Symposium with Greater Dienstad are great opportunities to not only get closer to allies but also introduce our RP to other regions as well as see how other regions do their RP
- These events allow mutual improvement and a chance for us as a region to diversify our outlook on RP
- The Winter Odinspyl is upcoming and a major RP event for Eras that must receive proper planning support to be a success
- This being said, I have no intention to step on RP’s feet or try to influence them, I wish to provide assistance as needed and appoint people who will ensure the RP/MoC relationship is a healthy and mutually beneficial one
Communications:
- Ensuring consistent releases that are on schedule is very important to the stability of the ministry and quality of the releases we distribute
- This can be achieved by bringing on additional staff and taking advantage of the cards program I will be describing below to benefit those hard workers already present and to incentivize new staffers to come aboard
- Reschedule releases to allow for more flexibility within staff meetings and collaborations
- At Ministry discretion however weekends are a target as of right now
- The WA Symposium is a great example of how we can bring in foreign authors to create intelligent and knowledgeable articles that can contribute to a growing local knowledge base
- This can be a foundation for creating a collection of articles that the Ministry can tap to create collections and TNPU content
- Following the previous point, The TNP University can begin to host essays that have been collected as we host symposiums and then released in anthologies by the ministry team to provide content similar to TNL
Radio:
- Establishing a consistent and achievable production schedule with approximately one show per every two weeks.
- Quality over quantity needs to be a major factor here and while I am not against adding additional shows, I want to ensure we can meet production goals and not overburden the staffers
- Officially ceasing show summaries, which currently is already occurring, however is not official policy yet.
- While these are used to increase the accessibility of the shows, these summaries are time sinks that require a large amount of effort on top of the important work the ministry already faces. For the moment, this is for the best.
- Increase the promotion and advertising of the NBS shows on our local platforms
- By utilizing Discord, forums, and gameside via announcements, telegrams, and RMB use, we can not only show our citizenry that these shows exist, we can get them excited and motivated to become involved in them!
- Recruit new staff and train them to be able to expand and achieve our goals
- Radio suffers from maintaining a staff of less than five active staffers, minister included. This general lack of staffing can prevent this ministry from achieving its goals and chasing down more ambitious ones
- This will work hand in hand with Home Affairs expanding recruitment and telegrams for ministries, which will help remedy this staffing issue over this term.
As you might have noticed, some recurring themes of the Internal Affairs platform are recruitment, sustainability, the utilization of cards. However you might have also noticed I did not specifically go into depth about how the Cards Guild will be employed to benefit the Executive Council in the coming term. Below, I will answer that question and provide you with a general plan that will be executed as my first major project in office. It is my priority to achieve full implementation of the cards reward program across the entire Executive by the end of this upcoming term.
Cards Guild:
- Continue the implementation of the cards rewards system that began last term
- Each Minister will outline specific actions/work that can be rewarded via cards. This is very much going to be an open ended project for this entire administration to tackle and I intend to take point on this
- The creation of assisting channels in the Executive Discord Server that will open communication between ministry leadership and Cards Guild leadership to ensure this project is implemented quickly and in a sustainable manner for the cards budget of the Guild.
- The role the Guild will possess here is one of a fulfillment entity where they will field requests and work with Ministers to ensure the rewards structure are sustainable and healthy for the Cards Guild
- The Guild will not have any impact in directing policy within the ministries, as that is not their place to do so. This is not meant to restrict the cards guild, but rather free them from the influence of any external political forces while assisting in getting this program off the ground.
- This cards rewards program should not be seen as an attempt to monetize government involvement, but rather reward our already hard working and involved staff.
- The cards rewards program will provide additional incentive to our already very hard working staffers and attracts new players not only to the Executive Staff, but also introduces them to Cards
- The current program in place with the NPA is a great example of the potential this program has and how it will be healthy to the Executive as a whole.
In moving on from Executive Council policy, I must address another growing issue that will be promptly dealt with over my term. Declassification has become an issue that has not been directly dealt with for some time. This involves a general shift in government activity from previous instant messaging platforms and the forums to a more modern Discord. In an effort to understand the challenges declassifications and discord presents, we must understand that the Discord platform and the nature of instant messaging in this more modern form creates an environment where an excess of messages are present. Not only are we facing a much larger load of messages to declassify than previously, but Discord also allows for people to stray between multiple different topics at a very high speed, requiring extra evaluation to ensure non-declassifiable items are not declassified. In order to effectively handle these new challenges, I plan to appoint one to two assistants who will assist me in declassifying old Executive Server channels and ensure that only the proper information is declassified. This will be a term-long project that will require a lot of time and investment however I believe it is a reasonable goal to have completed come the new year.
While I could go on for much longer about the many ideas and goals I have as I aspire to be your Delegate, I will bring this announcement and subsequent platform to a close. If you have made it this far, I sincerely thank you for your time and I hope we share some commonality in our vision for TNP. I thank you in advance for your support and I wish you all the best.
I invite any and all questions you might have! I will be around during normal EST hours to respond and also respond to discord pings/dms and telegrams!
