[PROPOSAL] The Information Governance Act

The Magisterium
1

SECTION I. CITATION
…1.1. This Act shall be known as the Information Governance Act.

SECTION II. DEFINITIONS
…2.1. For the purposes of this Act, the following definitions shall be adopted:
…2.1.1. “NS Infrastructure Nation” - A nation hosted in Nationstates for the express purpose of the execution of one or more functions of the Executive.
…2.1.2. “NS Infrastructure Email” - The email used by any NS Infrastructure Nation for > verification.
…2.1.3. “Regional Dispatches” - Dispatches created by a NS Infrastructure Nation for the purposes of executing one or more functions of the Executive.
…2.1.4. “True Copy” - A copy that acts as the definitive object for the purposes of archiving and preservation.
…2.1.5. "TEP Programs” - A program that is created by the government to aid in its functions in government.

SECTION III. INFRASTRUCTURE GOVERNANCE
…3.1. The Government of The East Pacific is the sole owner of all NS Infrastructure Nations used within The East Pacific, as well as the NS Infrastructure Email associated with those nations. The Delegate is charged with the management of these assets in order to fulfill the duties of the Executive.
…3.1.1. All NS Infrastructure Nations shall be associated to one and only one NS Infrastructure Email.
…3.1.2. After the conclusion of a Delegate Election, the previous Delegate has 15 days to give the passwords of all NS Infrastructure Nations as well as the password of the NS Infrastructure Email. The new Delegate shall then change the passwords of all NS Infrastructure Nations, as well as the password of the NS Infrastracture email.
…3.2. The Passwords of the NS Infrastructure Nations shall only be known by the current Delegate, unless they share it to one or more members of the Cabinet in order to execute one or more functions of the Executive. The Password of the NS Infrastructure Email shall not be shared to anyone except for the succeeding Delegate for the purposes of changing that password.
…3.2.1. Any member of government who reveals these passwords to unauthorized parties shall be charged with Treason-Espionage as per the Treason Act.

SECTION IV. DISPATCH GOVERNANCE
…4.1. A Subforum shall be created for the purposes of archiving and preservation of all Regional Dispatches.
…4.2. All Regional Dispatches must have a True Copy stored within the Forums of The East Pacific.
…4.2.1. For Regional Dispatches that are expected to change rapidly, a Template True Copy may instead be stored within the Subforum. This must be explicitly stated within the title of the forum post.

SECTION V. CODE GOVERNANCE
…5.1. All Program Code published for the East Pacific shall be published under the (license agreement). The Delegate is charged with the management of these assets in order to fulfill the duties of the Executive.
…5.1.1. All Program Code must be hosted within Github, with each Program being hosted in a repository managed by the NS Infrastructure Email.
…5.2. Any and all programmers who contribute Program Code to any program to be used by the East Pacific must agree to surrender ownership of their contribution to the government of the East Pacific.
SECTION VI. TRANSITORY PROVISIONS
…6.1. Following the passage of this act, the Executive shall have 30 days to comply with the provisions set forth in this Act.

This proposal has been created in order to address the Vussul incident, in which one former member of government took down several key nations used by the government, erasing practically most of our onsite dispatches. In order to address this, this proposal does the following:

  1. Explicitly defines what Infrastructure Nations are (nations used by the executive to conduct onsite activity such as EPNS, REWARD, etc.)
  2. Define who exactly may have control over these nations (the Delegate and whoever they wish to give to)
  3. Creates a transitory process that shows how the Infrastructure Nations and Email are transferred from Delegate to Delegate (ex-Delegate gives the new Delegate the passwords, who will then change them)
  4. Defines Archival processes for dispatches
  5. Attempts to take a stab at code management (this is the most iffy: see below)

I forsee that the biggest issue with this proposal would be the code Governance section. It is half-baked at best. However, it is primarily there to stoke some conversation on how we plan to manage IT assets, like the discord bot. Do we Open Source it? If so, with what licence?

I’d also like to note that there is a reason why I limit this to nations (like the UTEP nations) to the exclusion of regions (like the TEP AMA Region, The Confederated East Pacific, etc). To my mind, regions are sort of like land assets, which this doesn’t attempt to cover. I believe that including regions would muddy the discussion, so I decided to exclude them.

Because of this, I don’t expect this to wholeheartedly pass yet. I do hope, however, that we may have some form of discussion regarding this, because this should not have happened. I want to address this incident by making sure its more difficult for this to happen again.

2

This is a good proposal in my opinion, and a needed one due to the fact that we did not expect this kind of situation from happening.

The implementation of this plan would certainly help in reducing possible future occurrences of that whole incident. Personally I don’t see anything that could be improved upon.

I’m sure we could figure something out to address the issues you laid out (however not me, as despite my passion for coding, this is far outside my capabilities), which is probably why you brought it to discussion!

3

I don’t think anything code should be under the Delegate’s (or IC Government) thumb

Also surrendering ownership should only be the case if it’s about a project developed by the TEP devs for TEP so we don’t run into weird edge cases

4

I like the measures described but I wonder if it would be better as an Administrative ordinance of some kind because ultimately, regional property is and should be OOCly administrated by Tep Network to withstand IC pressures and threats as well as to ensure greater continuity and OOC respect for intellectual property – “giving away” your work to an OOC entity is better than giving it away to a fake entity, particularly when Vussul’s arguments surrounded the dispatches being his property for making them. I’d also like an Admin to found each nation rather than an Executive because Executives come and go and turn and Admin is forever. When it comes down to it, that’s the most basic way to determine true ownership – who created it.

That aside, here’s some notes:

The wording seems to preclude infrastructure maintained by other branches of government. What if the Praesidium wants a secure nation inaccessible to the Delegate to prevent editing of the type Fedele did on the Concordat dispatch? What if the Magisterium wants an on-site law library? What if the Conclave wishes to post rulings in dispatches? I will say it was frustrating for me as Grand Vizier to rely on the Executive to edit lists of Viziers and whatnot when I was the most qualified person to edit it and it was also my job to represent the branch.

On top of that, the act speaks nothing of dispatches created by a non-regional nation. For example, I maintained a relations chart as MoFA and posted Culture reports and Executive reports as Minister/Delegate respectively all on my own nation. That, I think, should be expressly prohibited. All infrastructure should be on infrastructure nations.

5

Thank you for your comments.

However, I disagree with this needing to be an Administrative manner. Unlike things such as the Discord and the Forums, Infrastructure Nations are inherently government-based. EPNS, REWARD, UTEP, these are born from Executive (and thus government) Initiatives, not Administrative ones. As such, ownership of these must lie within the government. While I understand that there remains an element of risk that comes with the constant changes in authority, I firmly believe that this is simply one of the weaknesses of democracy as a whole: that is, we cannot wholely remove this, only mitigate this.

For your other comments:

Good point. This is very much executive focused, for sure, mostly because it was written as a response to the incident. Perhaps this can be the time for the whole of the government, not just the Executive, to create and maintain an onsite presence. I will think out an amendment to my proposal to address this, however I will accept any suggestions.

…I also could have sworn I wrote a clause disallowing non-regional nation dispatches, but after checking my drafts, it turns out I didnt. Apologies, I’ll also amend that.

Honestly, with this feedback, I might be ok with cutting out the code governance section: that, unlike the other two, toes the line between govt and admin too much for my liking. We can cut it out, or amend it to focus on code that manages dispatches (REWARD?)

6

The latter seems more appropriate with the nature of the act itself.