A Shift in the CSO


A Shift in the CSO
A small history of the CSO and an idea for its future
Written by JayDee
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When looking through the archives, one of the most consistent themes of the presidential election is how we are supposed to improve our Civil Service Officium (CSO). Every 70 days, a new idea comes forth on how to fix this issue, and more often than not it either makes it worse, or does nothing for the issue at all. It has become a constant cycle of problems that changes with each supposed solution.

When I first joined, the problem was the application process. Newcomers had to apply to each individual ministry page and answer a few questions in order to get into the Ministry. Eventually the problem became highlighted that doing such was intimidating and tedious for newcomers and just took too long for old timers. To resolve it, the idea was introduced to centralize the application process, which is what we have today.

Now a new problem has arisen, many assistant ministers (AMs) find themselves out of their depth in a ministry that they don’t understand and ministers find themselves unable to employ able bodied workers because they don’t know enough about each individual person.

With all the problems that it has caused, why do we have the CSO in the first place? Our founder, HEM, came from an allied region of the Land of Kings and Emperors (LKE), a region known as Great Britain & Ireland. Naturally, much of Europeia’s early history and decisions were influenced by LKE, including the creation of junior ministers(JM). Similar to what is today known as assistant ministers, junior ministers were volunteer based positions. The difference is that junior ministers were chosen by the ministers themselves to serve under them in a specific area. Similar to a real job, there were only spaces available if the Ministers opened up a space. Multiple people would begin applying for one single spot, and typically it became a game of favorites to see who would earn the spot as JM. While not always commonplace, there were some who would give heavy priority to people in their own political party over others. Naturally, this caused larger gaps in the skills and abilities of Europeians. Some players got better while others stagnated.

After nearly two years with this system, HEM finally came out with a new idea, the Civil Service Act. ”This was just too complex, and never worked,” HEM remarked about the junior minister system in a Grand Hall speech prior to the proposal. Now, JMs could sign up to the Civil Service, and someone would go through the process of finding an appropriate fit for the new JM. While an improvement, this didn’t solve everything. For a while it worked, but with the boom in population, the CSO didn’t have time to interview every individual assistant minister to put them in the right spot.

Despite its flaws, the CSO has contributed tremendously to the growth of Europeia. Presidents now have a pool of able bodied AMs to select from to fulfill a ministerial post when they ascend to the Goldenblock. On the player side, they are able to build up experience in areas that they care about. Contributing to the region at a pace that they prefer in a friendly environment.

It’s obvious the CSO is in need of further development, even after all these years. Newly elected President, Calvin Coolidge, proposed another shift in the CSO program, introducing a point system throughout the Civil Services to reward members for their contributions. Stating in his platform “the activity will be converted into a point system, a la Harry Potter...for those being rewarded, the CSO will award ranks to workers weekly based on their progress.”

Using a points system would be similar to what the Ministry of Interior already has with its Harry Potter roleplay program, from which the idea is derived. However, I believe this could lead to even bigger changes, including a complete reform of the CSO as we know it today. This could include refounding the CSO into a new system that gives greater access to AMs and encourages greater collaboration across the ministries.

In this new system, a citizen no longer has to apply for each ministry that they would like to participate in. Like the Citizens’ Assembly, a citizen is automatically a part of every ministry upon becoming a citizen. What does that mean for the ministries? It means more eyeballs on discussion in each area, more people to critique ideas that are presented and contribute to said idea. A larger pool of members to choose from in each ministry. One of the greatest problems is that each ministry is treated as its own entirely separate entity, there is little to no push for collaboration amongst the ministries. This can be almost entirely eliminated with the new system. Assistant ministers can carry over ideas from one ministry to the next without fear of repercussion. Ministers themselves can openly expend resources on projects started in other ministries that they may believe affects their ministry. Now projects can be worked on by multiple ministries at the same time without having to worry about keeping discussion secret.

The first issue that most might ask is how are we supposed to keep these ideas a secret in order to surprise people outside the ministry? Well, we have no need to keep these projects a secret once they’re introduced by the minister. Perhaps at the very beginning stage when it’s just a discussion between ministers, but once the idea is introduced, it’s pointless to keep it secret. Ideas like the Harry Potter roleplay gained nothing by being kept secret, if anything, it lost something. With less people able to see the product in its planning stage, there is a high possibility that something could have been missed, an unspoken idea that couldn’t be acted upon.

Where this could create the biggest problem is more than likely the Communications ministry, where ministers prefer to keep proposed articles hidden from public viewing until it’s published. That’s where keeping information slightly hidden from public eye is preferred. Instead, we will continue to use the idea recently utilized by Communications Minister Deepest House. A forum will be created solely for the introduction of articles. Only the Ministers, Deputy Ministers, and author will be able to hold access to this forum. The author only holding it for a temporary amount of time, until their article is published.

Whether or not this idea becomes a reality, I think it's time we got a discussion going amongst the citizenry in where we want to go with the CSO and what the possibilities lie ahead with it.
 
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Our founder, HEM, came from one of the colonies of the Land of Kings and Emperors (LKE), a colony known as Great Britain & Ireland.
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No. This is very much incorrect. HEM joined Empires of Earth as Atlantis in late 2006/early 2007 where he became active there and the LKE; it was at my pestering that he became involved (nominally) in GB&I and TNI. Perhaps it changed much later, but GB&I was never a colony of the LKE as far as I recall. I believe GB&I was in fact older than the LKE and more well-established as well (NES or r3n would know better than I, they were active there long before it was my first region in the game). Empires of Earth, TNI, the LKE, and GB&I were all independent regions that were very closely aligned with one another politically, so to say that GB&I was a colony of the LKE is misleading at best.
 
If that's incorrect then I apologize. A lot of this was based off of memory, and said memory is not always the best.
 
Lethen said:
Our founder, HEM, came from one of the colonies of the Land of Kings and Emperors (LKE), a colony known as Great Britain & Ireland.
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No. This is very much incorrect. HEM joined Empires of Earth as Atlantis in late 2006/early 2007 where he became active there and the LKE; it was at my pestering that he became involved (nominally) in GB&I and TNI. Perhaps it changed much later, but GB&I was never a colony of the LKE as far as I recall. I believe GB&I was in fact older than the LKE and more well-established as well (NES or r3n would know better than I, they were active there long before it was my first region in the game). Empires of Earth, TNI, the LKE, and GB&I were all independent regions that were very closely aligned with one another politically, so to say that GB&I was a colony of the LKE is misleading at best.
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I am not sure about the specifics of HEM coming to GB&I. I seem to recall him saying that I recruited him to GB&I, and that before that he was in a region called The League of Dictatorships.

The claim about LKE and GB&I is completely incorrect. GB&I was never a colony of the LKE. As for the other regions Lethen mentions, TNI was, for a brief period after it was first created, under the political control of the LKE, but eventually became independent. With the exception of this brief period, GB&I, LKE, TNI and EoE were always independent of each other.

It is true that, during the period when all four regions were active, they were very closely aligned diplomatically, through a multi-lateral alliance called the Congress of Sovereigns and through a network of shared memberships. During this period, GB&I was the most dominant politically and diplomatically among the four.
 
Seven Deaths said:
I'm not a huge fan of how the poll answers are worded. :p
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I'm generally not sure if I'm a fan of having polls attached to EBC articles regularly. I don't really see the point, and this seems to be a trend under this administration, so I thought I'd point out that oddity. What benefit does any poll really give to this article, especially given the aforementioned questionable wording of the options?
 
The addition of the poll was something started by me. The reason why I do it is because I want the conversation to go further than my article-post. I want people to engage with the article and -start- the conversation.

In my previous two articles I have clearly made a point of asking a question.

JayDee has made the poll look amateurish because he's just trying out and is an amateur. His poll is probably less useful than he would have liked but you're free not to take part too.

If you don't like polls, tough. I think it's a way we can use existing functionality in a cleverly.

Any effort to sustain or any addition to our regional conversation is absolutely a Good Thing.
 
It's nice to see that people are more concerned about the nature of how the poll is worded rather than the article itself. I see plenty of people who are against the idea, but no one has said why. The whole reason I wrote this was to spark discussion about the CSO. <_<
 
At least now we know there is appetite for an enlarged discussion about the CSO and Interior. And moreover it singles to this administration that a policy document on this would be a Good Thing too.
 
JayDee said:
It's nice to see that people are more concerned about the nature of how the poll is worded rather than the article itself. I see plenty of people who are against the idea, but no one has said why. The whole reason I wrote this was to spark discussion about the article. <_<
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Exactly. Now we know there is room and inclination for this debate --- let's have it people.

Personally, we've been given little idea as to the structure of EuroMagicalSchool (or whatever) in the context of the CSO. Maybe someone from interior can finally, FINALLY, saying with painful detail how this will be carried out.
 
My problem with your proposed idea, JayDee, is that by making every citizen a member of every ministry, the very concept of... novelty is taken out of all kinds of planned events, cultural festivals, projects, rollouts and plans. If everyone knows what's coming, that fresh 'new idea' smell vanishes.
 
I would prefer it if we had temporary project subforums that get created, masked and then merged later semi-publically when the event is over.
 
@CQ-If I may draw a real world equivalent to this, when your local town/city has the exact same fair every single year, does that take away from the fun of it? Maybe it does for you, maybe you don't participate in local festivals at all. For me, however, I find the events to be just as enjoyable if I already knew about them in advance than being kept in the dark. The same can be said for theme parks, especially Six Flags. When you go to any Six Flags, they most likely have all the same things as any other Six Flags, but you still go because you know it's fun. If the surprise is the most exciting part of a festival, then the festival has failed.
 
As a principle I would value secrecy over transparency. You don't have collaboration happening because of newbie AMs, you have collaboration happen because up-top are smart and can coordinate.
 
I myself prefer transparency unless secrecy is an absolute requirement. While it's good to collaborate at the higher levels, we should be encouraging collaboration at every level of the ministry.
 
I'll add for the record that a poll was never proposed as a part of this article. I only knew a poll would be included when I saw it posted.

Edit to add: I certainly don't think a poll is necessary for every article, or nearly every article. Also, had the poll and answers been discussed before publication, they would've looked different.
 
Pivoting back to the secrecy v. transparency thing, I agree with Cerian. The novelty definitely goes away if everyone knows about what's all being planned (well, the specifics - knowing that a show on X topic is happening is different). For example, we wouldn't want the details of every Culture event being leaked beforehand; likewise, I find it odd that we have Comms posting public titles/topics for their articles even if we don't know the content of those articles.

Also count me out of the CSO discussion. I am so out-of-touch with the CSO and how its been run (and being run) that I'd have nothing of use to contribute.
 
I'll admit it's is a bit different from what we've done in the past. The administration ran on increased transparency as a big part of the platform, so we are giving it a shot. Doesn't hurt to try, and we will see how it goes.
 
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