Cabinet Dialogue Session, August 2020

The Plaza
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Welcome to the latest edition of a Cabinet Dialogue Session!

I’m Em, the new Chief Minister of Regional Affairs, and would like to welcome you!

This dialogue session will run for 7 days and has two components.

  1. A simple poll to see where the overall opinion of what citizens think.

  2. The open dialogue between cabinet and the citizens of the region. This enables you to ask questions and have open and free discussion with the government’s top officials. I ask if you vote “no” in the poll to please let us know what you think can be improved and where you see any failures. We have a few new ministers that recently took office or will be taking office in a few days and any input would greatly help them also.

Let the hunger game begin!

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Right now I am just the Deputy Minister of Culture in charge of Internal Events, but since I was Minister of Culture up until yesterday, I will be available to address concerns with how I handled things, to make the transition of Ministers as smooth as possible.

As a citizen I can safely say I’m satisfied with the government right now and where it’s heading.

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As Deputy Provost of the 44th, 45th and 46th Magisteriums; I’m happy with our government function right now.
I would be very complainant of everything otherwise.

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Hello!  I am in the incomming Director of Public Affairs(as of August 21st)!  Currently, I serve as Deputy of Public Affairs(ends August 21st).  I would love for anyone’s feedback!

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— Begin quote from ____

As Deputy Provost of the 44th, 45th and 46th Magisteriums; I’m happy with our government function right now.
I would be very complainant of everything otherwise.

— End quote

I believe this is focused on the Executive, not the Legislature.

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I quite like the executive as is, but saying that everything is going perfectly when I see several areas for improvement would be counterproductive. But the full enumeration can wait until the fundamental problem with this thread is aired: What is a dialogue session without dialogue?

After you’ve given some thought to that question and its implications, you might find yourself in the list below. If you do, please remember that although my tone may be superficially harsh, criticism is simply my way of trying to make TEP better. In doing so, I try to recognize the merits of my fellow citizens and executive colleagues and address issues in equal measure. If you don’t, you may find your work as part of a ministry criticized, and I hope you will also keep those last couple sentences in mind. If you aren’t in any of the below ministries, %url% Or you’re a visitor from the future and/or an alien who can’t join. In that case, do you come in peace or do you come in coups?)

Obligatory advertisement for TEP’s executive aside, here’s the long list, organized by position.

Leadership
[mention]Libertanny[/mention], you set the foundations of your #L4D - Google Docs on a series of ideals. Democracy, approachability, and unity were among the first keywords. Given that no RMBer, nor non-executive government member for that matter, has answered in this thread, to what extent do you believe you have fostered these ideals?

You also laid out an ambitious plan of action. Many of them have gotten good starts—BoPA creation, UTEP revival, Consortium organization—however, some initiatives are still struggling to get off the ground—REWARD is barely further than it was March; the last time I remember Statesmus+ mentioned was over a month ago. Still others haven’t been started yet: Staffer of the Month and TEPWiki promotion seem to have been forgotten. And finally, some policies just haven’t worked out (I’ll get to the elephants in the room pretty soon). Full execution of your goals in this term seems downright impossible especially since you are over halfway through. How do you plan to prioritize your goals? Which ones do you want to be part of this term’s legacy?

Finally, I am curious about why you decided to establish my ministry, the Ministry of Innovation, since it was not part of your initial plans.

[mention]McStooley[/mention], the Vice Delegacy has always seemed to me like a bit of a fuzzy role. I don’t see your messages that often, and I’m guessing much of your work is behind-the-scenes. How would you describe the way you improve TEP on a typical day?

Chief Ministers
[mention]Wallenburg[/mention], I appreciate your work to make TEP’s WAA more accessible to RMBers through dispatches. However, I think REWARD will be an even better way to do so. What does REWARD need to get off the ground?

[mention]Earth Systems Alliance[/mention], you’ve been gracefully handling TEP’s FA for the last month. Even as it hit a couple major changes—TWP and Osiris—FA has managed to stay fairly calm. You have publicly told the media to “refer to our statement” regarding TWP. However, TEP has no statement regarding Osi, and not nearly the the degree of fallout. Why do you think the situations came to such different results?

[mention]Em[/mention], as I’m sure you know, I’m a fan of your approach to regional affairs. The spreadsheet format works well for TEP.

[mention]Atlae[/mention], EPSA mission reports were a great idea. Before you started those, I didn’t know what EPSA was up to. Keep them up!
You mentioned you were getting tired of MoIC because it was so end-of-the-month loaded. Would there be a way to distribute that work more?

Ministers
[mention]Altys[/mention], you’ve implied that you have big shoes to fill. How do your ideas for Culture differ from Aivintis’? I have enjoyed seeing what he has done to date and look forward to seeing your version of Culture.

[mention]Wonderess[/mention], you’ve done a great job at breathing some life into UTEP. You also mentioned the issue with Ministries of Education is their general tendency towards inactivity. Your solution, the multiple regions university, is facing its own inactivity issue. How do you plan to combat it?

[mention]VW53a[/mention], Immigration has always processed all citizenship apps with speed and efficiency consistently. But it rarely, if ever, advertises itself on the RMB. Would you be able to do that? Also, I wonder about the effectiveness of telegramming nations who indicate their interest on citizenship apps. Do you have statistics on things like response rates and actual applications?

[mention]SirShadow[/mention], BoPA also has a fuzzy role. As the new Director of BoPA, what’s your vision for it?

Since I am Minister of Innovation, I will end with an invitation. I welcome any and all suggestions for improving TEP and would be happy to answer questions about my plans for MoIV. Please, if you can think of them, write a response.

Thanks for reading!

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[mention]borromeanWhyKnot[/mention] Thank you for your question. So the current issue is that many of our allies seem to have universities already. Furthermore, their aim or structure is not the same as ours which would make the charter difficult to enforce. I hope we can find smaller regions without a university who could benefit from taking part in ours. We have to find them first though. That search is ongoing, and I have brought on Foreign Affairs to help me with this. I hope to find some prime candidates soon to be inaugural signatories of the charter along with TEP.

As always, I incite everyone to come join in the life of the University. The more of us taking part in the discussion, the stronger we are as an academic community. Check out the UTEP Discord for more info or to get involved: Discord

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@borrowmeanWhyKnot Thank your for taking the time to ask! The situation with Osiris is still rather fresh and on a personal note, I do think our relationship with Osiris was smoother than the one with The West Pacific. Is it regrettable that we’ve reached this point? Yes, truly, We came closer with Osiris, even if we had a near-decade’s worth of diplomatic relations with TWP.  I hope I answered your question and thank you for your kind words!

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[mention]borromeanWhyKnot[/mention] Thank you for your question!

I indeed have big shoes to fill. From what I’ve heard and seen, Aivintis has done a really good job during his time as MoC, and keeping up with this will not be an easy task (especially considering I am still fairly new to TEP).

My ideas of culture certainly do not differ too much from my predecessor (as I was his Deputy for a time and he is my Deputy now), but I may organise more (small) interregional events, mainly game nights, for example. I only have one planned future big project as of now, and will soon survey our citizens to know what culture happening(s) they would like to see from me and my staff. 😛

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— Begin quote from ____

[mention]VW53a[/mention], Immigration has always processed all citizenship apps with speed and efficiency consistently. But it rarely, if ever, advertises itself on the RMB. Would you be able to do that? Also, I wonder about the effectiveness of telegramming nations who indicate their interest on citizenship apps. Do you have statistics on things like response rates and actual applications?

— End quote

Hey, I remember answering this question, but I can’t find it here (anymore), so I’ll answer it (again).

I am not fond of the RMB myself. Note that that has nothing to do with the RMB or its users, but it’s just me. I don’t like how it’s a single thread, that 'll give you hundreds of new posts in one night that you’ll have to sift through to find an answer to an earlier question for instance. It’s too fast and too single-threaded for my taste.
However, I do see the importance of the RMB as one of the first contact abilities for new players. It’s a place where they get to ask their questions about NS and TEP. For this reason, I have hired Virgolia earlier this year. Virgolia is very active on the RMB and has a very friendly and helping character. What I want is for newbies, as well as for ‘oldies’, is to feel at home in our region; and the RMB is one of the first places where we can give nations that feeling.

About the “effectiveness of telegramming nations”;
No, I have no statistics about this. It is hard to measure too. Because, if someone applies to the Executive, is it because of our TG, or was it only in part due to our TG, or was it regardless of our TG? What I hope our TG does, is first and foremost giving nations a warm welcome, and secondly giving them a few links that might come in handy later. For instance, a newbie might want to check out NS further first and not immediately want to sign up for a ministry, though they do have interest in that ministry’s tasks. So they might want to keep and archive the TG for later use.

I hope this answers your questions.