Special Comment #2: Bureaucracy is not a dirty word – or at least it shouldn't be.
The passage of the Mandatory Service Act and the discussion sparked by McEntire's article regarding it is part and parcel of a larger question, of how to get things done in Europeia. The Mandatory Recruitment Act distributed the amazingly dull, tedious and boring task of recruitment to all major government officials, so as to prevent it from just being the task of the Minister of the Interior and maybe one or two volunteers. I know that I certainly would not have recruited if I had not been forced to, back during my first tenure in the Senate. I had more interesting things to do, both here in Europeia and elsewhere – indeed, having had to manually recruit for the region I'm setting up right now, I have newfound respect for those people who found the time and wherewithal to send out thousands or more recruitment telegrams. There were other considerations, including the idea that the Senate and the Executive, being the highest of citizens, should be expected to serve the region more.
Recruitment is no longer an option, but with Welcoming an even higher priority and the desire to continue to see Senators and Executive officials serve the region more, has led to the Mandatory Service Act, a law I personally think is a good idea.
The issue with the MSA being, according to McEntire – and he raises some good points – is that it distracts Ministers and Senators from doing their jobs. And that is possibly a fair point. He also criticizes the particular choices of what activities earn points and which ones don't, and how many points are assigned for which activities. Salient points as well, and things that will need to be looked into by the new Senate. Private newspaper articles should certainly be included, and there may be some ways to add other cultural activities to this as well.
The critique by McEntire, also, tied into his dislike of the new President's plan to essentially shuttle new arrivals into a souped-up version of the CSO. Which brings me to the main point of this article.
The CSO is somewhat flawed. Its a fine idea, but it needs heavy refinement, and more importantly, how the Ministries treat and regard their Junior Ministers needs to be refined as well. Our ministries don't really seem to have much in the way of institutional mechanisms that can last from minster to minister. We have something resembling a bit of ad-hoc and Minister led efforts, but little that lasts from Minister to Minister. The MoFA is probably the one that has this the best, but even then there is room for improvement.
Anyone who is over in TNI knows that a recent initiative of Reich Chancellor the Graz has been to create a series of 'Services' that can exist underneath the umbrella of the Ministries, and operate the grunt work, while the Minister sets policy. The Imperial Immigration Service is responsible for bringing people from the region onto the forums, the Imperial Naturalization Service is responsible for keeping them on the forums and integrating them. The Imperial Diplomatic Service isn't new, but there are plans to bring that in line with the Graz's new bureaucratic vision for TNI's government. As a way for new people to get involved, as a way to establish institutional memory, and more. The Imperial Culture Service, which I am heading as the Minister of Culture, is also being created and will be able to operate its duties after me, allowing Culture to retain some consistency from Minister to Minister.
If Europeia had had a more established and clear bureaucratic substructure, then, for example, when Ogastein vanished, there could still have been cultural work being done, and the Anniversary planning could have been handled even sooner than it ended up having to be. Culture would not have essentially shut down in the time between Ogastein's appointment and the Crist / Me 'incident' that would lead to Apollo's appointment as Culture Minister. Apollo would indeed go on to be an excellent choice, and he planned the Anniversary celebrations exceedingly well. But Culture should not have shut down without Ogastein. If Europeia had, say, a 'Europeian Culture Service' or something like that, or at the very least, a more organized bureaucracy within the Culture Ministry, things would have gone much smoother, and Apollo’s workload as Culture Minister, taking over mid-term, would have been more manageable, and maybe he could have had the time and energy to make the Anniversary planning even better, or plan more cultural activities. This isn’t a criticism of Apollo, who did pretty much the best he could in the situation.
In Welcoming, there was a massive backlog, after Welcoming efforts essentially shut down. Abbey has led an effort to clear that Backlog, and she's done astonishingly well in that regard so far. But we can hardly expect one Minister and a few others to clear huge backlogs on a regular basis. The MSA can help correct this, its true, but still, a Welcoming Service, a more organized bureaucracy, could have prevented this problem from happening.
Organized bureaucracy also allows for internal promotion, to recognize good work, hard workers, etc. It would create reservoirs as talent within various ministerial fields that would result in clear promotion to Minister Status, someday, from within, as new members get better and better in the areas they're in the bureaucratic structures of.
The Ministries need more internal organization, they need institutional structure, mechanisms and memories to keep things going in the absence of a Minister, to carry out the Minister's grunt work, to train new Junior Ministers, and in general allow the Minister to direct policy and deal with the higher functions of their office.
Europeia needs to develop a better way to establish organization within the Ministries. Europeia has the numbers, the talent, the connections and the position to become even greater than it is, but we need to make better use of all of them. And while it will be hard work and time consuming on whichever Minister or official gets appointed to create these, the rewards to Europeia down the line in terms of new member involvement, organization and institutional memory and consistency will be well worth the effort.
The passage of the Mandatory Service Act and the discussion sparked by McEntire's article regarding it is part and parcel of a larger question, of how to get things done in Europeia. The Mandatory Recruitment Act distributed the amazingly dull, tedious and boring task of recruitment to all major government officials, so as to prevent it from just being the task of the Minister of the Interior and maybe one or two volunteers. I know that I certainly would not have recruited if I had not been forced to, back during my first tenure in the Senate. I had more interesting things to do, both here in Europeia and elsewhere – indeed, having had to manually recruit for the region I'm setting up right now, I have newfound respect for those people who found the time and wherewithal to send out thousands or more recruitment telegrams. There were other considerations, including the idea that the Senate and the Executive, being the highest of citizens, should be expected to serve the region more.
Recruitment is no longer an option, but with Welcoming an even higher priority and the desire to continue to see Senators and Executive officials serve the region more, has led to the Mandatory Service Act, a law I personally think is a good idea.
The issue with the MSA being, according to McEntire – and he raises some good points – is that it distracts Ministers and Senators from doing their jobs. And that is possibly a fair point. He also criticizes the particular choices of what activities earn points and which ones don't, and how many points are assigned for which activities. Salient points as well, and things that will need to be looked into by the new Senate. Private newspaper articles should certainly be included, and there may be some ways to add other cultural activities to this as well.
The critique by McEntire, also, tied into his dislike of the new President's plan to essentially shuttle new arrivals into a souped-up version of the CSO. Which brings me to the main point of this article.
The CSO is somewhat flawed. Its a fine idea, but it needs heavy refinement, and more importantly, how the Ministries treat and regard their Junior Ministers needs to be refined as well. Our ministries don't really seem to have much in the way of institutional mechanisms that can last from minster to minister. We have something resembling a bit of ad-hoc and Minister led efforts, but little that lasts from Minister to Minister. The MoFA is probably the one that has this the best, but even then there is room for improvement.
Anyone who is over in TNI knows that a recent initiative of Reich Chancellor the Graz has been to create a series of 'Services' that can exist underneath the umbrella of the Ministries, and operate the grunt work, while the Minister sets policy. The Imperial Immigration Service is responsible for bringing people from the region onto the forums, the Imperial Naturalization Service is responsible for keeping them on the forums and integrating them. The Imperial Diplomatic Service isn't new, but there are plans to bring that in line with the Graz's new bureaucratic vision for TNI's government. As a way for new people to get involved, as a way to establish institutional memory, and more. The Imperial Culture Service, which I am heading as the Minister of Culture, is also being created and will be able to operate its duties after me, allowing Culture to retain some consistency from Minister to Minister.
If Europeia had had a more established and clear bureaucratic substructure, then, for example, when Ogastein vanished, there could still have been cultural work being done, and the Anniversary planning could have been handled even sooner than it ended up having to be. Culture would not have essentially shut down in the time between Ogastein's appointment and the Crist / Me 'incident' that would lead to Apollo's appointment as Culture Minister. Apollo would indeed go on to be an excellent choice, and he planned the Anniversary celebrations exceedingly well. But Culture should not have shut down without Ogastein. If Europeia had, say, a 'Europeian Culture Service' or something like that, or at the very least, a more organized bureaucracy within the Culture Ministry, things would have gone much smoother, and Apollo’s workload as Culture Minister, taking over mid-term, would have been more manageable, and maybe he could have had the time and energy to make the Anniversary planning even better, or plan more cultural activities. This isn’t a criticism of Apollo, who did pretty much the best he could in the situation.
In Welcoming, there was a massive backlog, after Welcoming efforts essentially shut down. Abbey has led an effort to clear that Backlog, and she's done astonishingly well in that regard so far. But we can hardly expect one Minister and a few others to clear huge backlogs on a regular basis. The MSA can help correct this, its true, but still, a Welcoming Service, a more organized bureaucracy, could have prevented this problem from happening.
Organized bureaucracy also allows for internal promotion, to recognize good work, hard workers, etc. It would create reservoirs as talent within various ministerial fields that would result in clear promotion to Minister Status, someday, from within, as new members get better and better in the areas they're in the bureaucratic structures of.
The Ministries need more internal organization, they need institutional structure, mechanisms and memories to keep things going in the absence of a Minister, to carry out the Minister's grunt work, to train new Junior Ministers, and in general allow the Minister to direct policy and deal with the higher functions of their office.
Europeia needs to develop a better way to establish organization within the Ministries. Europeia has the numbers, the talent, the connections and the position to become even greater than it is, but we need to make better use of all of them. And while it will be hard work and time consuming on whichever Minister or official gets appointed to create these, the rewards to Europeia down the line in terms of new member involvement, organization and institutional memory and consistency will be well worth the effort.
