A Shift in the CSO
A small history of the CSO and an idea for its future
Written by JayDee
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.
