You are not favouring a system of efficiency. You are favouring a system of unaccountability.
No, I am absolutely in favor of accountability. The Assembly would still have the authority to hold the Prime Minister and their cabinet accountable through motions of no confidence.
Which does nothing to prevent the appointment of individuals who may be inadequate to the office.
I would trust the Prime Minister to make that judgement.
Why must the Prime Minister be given such an extreme level of deference? They are just a person who was elected to lead the executive. Their election doesn’t magically make them infallible or above appointing ministers who may be inadequate to the task at hand.
I’ve given it some thought, and I believe Pronoun’s ministries/offices would be better than a nested bureaucracy. Alternatively, they could all just be called ministries; the only real difference is the motive behind them existing.
In this bill:
- The Prime Minister must appoint a MoFA and MoD, and may appoint up to five additional ministers, to enact their agenda. I don’t see the need for other permanent ministries, so I’ve left it for the P.M. to decide what else is needed.
- Departments have been replaced with independent offices for maintaining long-term institutions. I’ve included OWL and SWAN, and revived the MoE, as a baseline, but this can be changed as needed. I’ve seen SPROUT and cards mentioned elsewhere as possible offices.
- Ministers and Directors serve during the Prime Minister’s pleasure. I could see making the Directors more insulated a possibility, but I feel that would lead to pointless unaccountability.
- Just as now, Directors can hold other Offices of the Coalition (e.g. lordnwahs as both Chair and Director), but Ministers cannot. I don’t mind restricting this however.
- Unlike now, Directors also need confirmation.
Also, I feel “Executive Branch” sounds awkward and should be renamed to something else. “Government” or “Administration” comes to mind, but I don’t know which is more popular here.
Charter
Executive Act
Other Amendments
What is the need for these amendments to the Treaties Act?
I do like this idea. I like the outline. I do feel that the need at this point to have SOME consistency is beneficial.
Having Codified Ministries and/or departments solves the issue of what ministries to fill and forces the PM to have a plan. Personally I think I may like to go back to electing these Ministers so that there is a semi balance of Consistency as this region is seriously lacking it.
I am opposed to any version of this change. Institutional knowledge within the executive can’t be created due to bureaucracy or formalizing Ministries, it is created by people taking on tasks that are of interest to them and using the resources of the government at the direction of the PM. Our current system is the best for this, as it gives the PM maximum authority to shape the direction of government, while being constrained by both Assembly approval and the interests of potential Minister candidates. I think this is true regardless of what we call these officials (e.g. Ministers/Directors/Secretaries/Officers/Dog Walkers/etc.) and how many layers of bureaucracy there are (or are not).
I think the argument in favor of this proposal falsely equates an office existing with the job of that office being done well (or at all). We thus assume “well, if there’s a Minister of Culture, there will be Culture staffers, and then that will create options for future Ministers of Culture” – but empirically that just doesn’t work. Good Ministers of Culture create themselves by coming up with ideas and then executing them. If someone has good ideas, they should say them out loud, and they’ll get taken on by the sitting PM or Minister, and thus become an option for being Minister next time around.
The criticism I hear of that approach is that people don’t realize that’s how it works, so they never come forward with ideas. The problem is that under an institutionalized Ministries + civil service system, that is still an issue. People still think in order to propose an idea that they have to be in office already or that they can’t call out a problem with how the incumbent is doing. And they still never get involved, because players in NS turn into leaders when they have their own idea (e.g. “here’s my festival idea”) and run with it, not just by proving they can be cogs in other players’ plans (e.g. “I can be only at 2:30 to host scriblgarticsnaker.io”).
This is different than in real life because, simply put, we’re not big enough to require or create institutional knowledge in the same way. The knowledge, skills, and talent we have in the executive is communal.
To answer specific ideas in Cryo’s proposal:
Why? The MoD does not have sole responsibility for running the SPSF and the SPSF can be just fine with only Admirals taking on active leadership. The PM’s decision about how to use their authority over the military (whether via an MoD or their own personal actions) is ultimately a political decision that they get to make.
Same for the MoFA. The PM’s authority over foreign affairs is inherent and there’s no reason they have to delegate it – that’s a political decision they should get to make.
Why up to five? That’s really arbitrary. If they can find more than five other Ministers, and they have specific roles, and the Assembly confirms them, then that’s fine.
What problem with the status quo is this change trying to fix?
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I’m partial to a lot of that but wary of dealing in absolutes. For example — if I know how to code, a signal that someone in regional government actually maintains our code somewhere is really useful to knowing that’s a thing at all. And we also know empirically that parts of our government where people develop specialized knowledge just by doing the same thing over and over also develop specialized processes. OWL finds a way to get voting threads out just like the Chair’s office finds a way to efficiently manage votes.
Well … you know … we had a system where we didn’t need ask the question “What Ministry is coming back” 
Snark aside, I’m pretty much in agreement with Kris, and I also agree with a lot of what HS wrote. Let’s evaluate the goal here rather than immediately dissecting a proposed solution. I interpret the OP as follows: Since an incoming PM needs to build up a new Cabinet structure, that reduces institutional memory due to lack of continuity, and is an unnecessary time-drain on an incoming PM.
So, how to solve this? I can think of a fairly simple and elegant solution that would fix the stated problem as I understand it: When a new PM takes office, they inherit their predecessor’s Cabinet, including Ministers. They can then use the existing tools they have to reshape their Cabinet as they want, but by default and doing nothing, it’s exactly as it was before.
Alternatively, we go back to elected Cabinets which is a better system in almost every way. One can dream. 
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I like this
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Indeed, and these parts don’t require or would want turnover like political appointees would.
Some two cents. In real countries, a ministry has a civil service body run by career bureaucrats who do the dirty admin work to get the policies done. The main job of the minister, who is a political appointee, is to formulate policies. The bureaucrats advice the minister on the practicalities of the policies the minister want then do the actual work of coordinating the resources to implement them. There is no reason why under present executive laws the cabinet cannot do this. The current cabinet can just make maybe some posts describing the current permanent activities and the bureaucrats responsible for them. Later cabinets inherit these documents and can modify them as needed. I think a separation between ministry vs office to maintain permanent activities is both unncessary and ineffective, it makes the problem much more complicated than it actually is.
Regarding the fixed ministry thing, I favor Roavin’s proposal of just inheriting what came before by default. It is in line with my above point regarding permanent activities. The debate on whether the Assembly should confirm ministers or not seems like something for another topic. There is quite a lot to talk about this and it will definitely clutter this place.
I’m not seeing it. Under current law (and it’s been spoken about before), the PM could create and enact a lot of policy far beyond the scope that we currently think of them as responsible for. They don’t, I’m assuming because of norms and because no one’s crazy enough to really test the limits of executive power. The same power that the PM could use to build a bureaucracy can be used to end it in one fell swoop by another.
What I’m also not seeing is how inheriting the old Cabinet (while still permitting everyone to be fired day one) is superior to returning to fixed ministries. “What sticks around in the next administration?” Is literally still a question to bring up at elections and does nothing for building institutional knowledge.
If the new PM knows they’ve got certain fixed ministries responsible for things that they can’t appoint other ministers to (a la Minister of Foreign Affairs is responsible for treaties, not a separate Minister of Treaty Negotiations), then we’re greatly reducing the risk of deleting executive institutions at the whim of whoever won the election.
All 3 of these people agreeing on something means it’s correct.
I feel like this change sounds more effective in theory than it would be in practice. In practice, the PM would simply dismiss some of the Ministers and remake things how they want. That’s the same as them just making the appointments they want at the start of the term. In practice, the only thing it changes is any Minister that PM retains would then not have to be reconfirmed.
Well yes, the PM still has the ability to throw away ministries and whatnot, but that was rhe explicit desire with the all-powerful PM position. My proposal keeps the flexibility, but increases the friction to introduce a change - since a new PM is no longer forced to think of their new structure, they may then choose to keep some or all of it.
Presumptuous, condescending and quite frankly down right incredibly short sited.
As it stands now it took seemingly ages this round and, if I recall correctly the last round too, to even get the Cabinet nominations and then vote on them. Honestly it’s a wee bit ridiculous. Clearly It isn’t working but I really don’t see these solutions AS solutions. it seems to me like a tomorrow problem. Codifying Cabinet positions with either needed appointment OR Election will solve a number of issues.
It’s a joke, ffs.
Go yell at the PM. It’s their fault for not having had a slate of nominees ready the day the election closed. They could start that process as soon as the election starts–the fact they don’t is their own fault.
I will vote against anything that doesn’t align with me cakeist ideals