Heliseum Cabinet Nominations

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Esteemed Chair and Fellow Legislators,

I hereby declare my intention to retain @Welly as Minister of Foreign Affairs, @CayonNS as Minister of Culture and @eternalraven213 as OWL Director. At this time, I am not moving to elevate the OWL Director into the Cabinet. The law, to my knowledge, does not require a vote to retain Ministers, but I would not object if the Assembly wishes to hold votes to reaffirm them. Please feel free to ask questions of them about their continued roles.

I hereby nominate @Flaming for the position of Minister of Culture, in equal standing and ability to the retained @CayonNS, with the following responsibility:

  • To promote the development of regional culture in the South Pacific by the organizing of events, projects and program to engage, inform and entertain its community.

I was impressed by the culture background and campaign ran by Flaming in this last election. They come with experience in the TSP Roleplay community, which has been largely overlooked by the government of late. I have confidence that, alongside the proven-capable hands of Cayo, they will perform excellently in Culture.

I hereby nominate @Utopia for the position of Minister of Defense, with the following responsibility:

  • To lead and oversee the South Pacific Special Forces, representing it to the public and the Cabinet while collaborating with the Admiralty to provide for its training, ceremonies and preparedness.

I have been working hand-in-hand with Utopia on SPSF leadership for quite some time now. He is inarguably the most active member of the force outside of myself, and he has the requisite connections into the broad military community. There is really no better choice for Defense.

I hereby nominate @xshotss for the position of Minister of Integration, with the following responsibility:

  • To maintain such infrastructure and practices in order to bring new nations into the Coalition, encourage deeper engagement with its community and provide support and information to members looking to get involved in the region.

I was really impressed with shots’ campaign and was saddened to see them withdraw. Integration has been a huge focus of regional politics lately, and I think a fresh perspective in the Cabinet from a promising candidate will be an assett on this issue.

I hereby nominate @ProfessorHenn for the position of Legislative Coordinator, with the following responsibility:

  • To represent the Government in the Assembly, pursue a governmental legislative agenda and promote the general actvity of and engagement with our Legislature.

We recently had a conversation as a region about the Chair and legislative agendas, and the community consensus seemed to be that they would like to see the Government take on the promotion of Assembly Culture and any such agenda to protote activity in the Halls rather than the Chair. Henn had been running on more affirmative ideas for Chair, and lost, in my view, largely because of that community consensus.

For a long time, Henn has been a collaborator of mine on ideas of government structure and reform, and I would like to see them continue the ideas he put forth for Chair within the context of the Executive. I have full confidence in their ability to do so.

I hereby nominate @Pronoun for the position of Director of Technology, with the following responsibility:

  • To track, systemetize and support the use of various technological systems within the Coalition, collaborate with other Ministries on the efficient and effective usage of such systems and promote technological development in the region.

Pronoun is one of, if not the most technically capable members of the Coalition, having created/programmed many of the tools used by the government, the SPSF, and the broader Defender community. When he pitched this idea to me, I immediately saw its utility and believed that he was singularly qualified to take on such a role.

In the coming days, I will be opening up an application portal for deputies and lower appointments, and decisions on such appointments will be made in in collaboration with the relavent Minister once they are confirmed.

I look forward to your questions, and to a stellar term. I remain,

Faithfully yours,

Heliseum
Prime Minister-Elect of the Coalition of the South Pacific

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[A2605.03] Appointement of Flaming as Minister of Culture
[A2605.02] Retain CayonNS as Minister of Culture
[A2605.05] Appointement of xshotss as Minister of Integration
[A2605.01] Retain Welly as Minister of Foreing Affairs
[A2605.04] Appointement of Utopia as Minister of Defense
[A2605.06] Appointement of Pronoun as Director of Technology
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Members of the Assembly,

I seek your confirmation as our region’s next Minister of Integration.

My main focus as Minister of Integration will be strengthening both recruitment and retention, with a particular emphasis on making it easier for new members to become active and stay active. Getting new citizens to join is important, but keeping them engaged after they arrive matters much more.

Main Points

  • First Impression: One of the main things I want to improve is the first impression new citizens get when they arrive. Instead of being presented with too much information at once, the goal is to give them a simple and clear starting point. This could be a short welcome guide that outlines exactly what they can do in their first few minutes. For example, introducing themselves, joining an active thread, or participating in a current event. The focus is on making their first interaction quick and straightforward. Rather than everything being open at once, new citizens could be given small steps or milestones to complete. For example, posting an introduction, joining an event, or contributing to a discussion. Completing these could be acknowledged in small ways, whether through roles, recognition, or simple shoutouts. This gives people a sense of progression and encourages them to stay active.

  • Utilizing Recruitment Tech: We have the adequate infrastructure to recruit people, yet it has been heavily underused these past terms. I plan to use it extensively in my campaign, improve on the existing recruitment TG, (maybe) make a variety of new recruitment TGs, and so on. A group of people will also be appointed to help out in this process. We have been relying too much on our 10% spawn as a feeder for growth. We need new, improved, and actually utilized ways of bringing new people into our community.

  • Entry-level Government Positions: While recruiting new people is a crucial step, we also need a way for said new people to actually get involved and start contributing to our region. One of Heliseum’s main campaign points is to keep and improve upon government positions like culture groups, ambassadors, et cetera. These teams and positions are a great way to get people hooked with the region and start their journey of being a member of our community. For the Ministry of Integration, a recruitment team will be set up to help with TG and RMB recruitment. In the previous term, the recruitment team was not as active as it needed to be, as recruitment in general was lacking. I plan to improve on this by training the recruitment team to make sure they are adequately prepared for their job, and make sure to give them an agenda of tasks to complete.
    Another government position going to be appointed for the Ministry of Integration is a Deputy MoI which will be a newer player mentored by the MoI, which is another way for our members to get involved.

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I thank the Prime Minister Elect for the nomination to continue as the OWL Director during their term. I have published my ideas for the office going forward already. I am happy to answer any additional questions the Assembly might have for me.

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Thank you for submitting your nominations!

As a matter of process, I would prefer that we vote to reconfirm Welly and CayonNS. There was precedent set when Kris set his Cabinet that a re-appointed Minister be confirmed:

That precedent may have been set other places as well, but I don’t recall it off the top of my head.

I think part of the value of re-nominating is it will encourage the nominees to go back to the Assembly and state a public agenda. This helps the nominees clarify and set their intention for the term, allows the Assembly to verify their vision matches the Assembly’s, and then will make it easier for the Assembly (and the PM) to hold the Ministers accountable during the term.

I am intrigued by your decision to have dual Ministers of Culture. How will you prevent the work of two co-equal Ministers from duplicating each other? Do you have a distinct vision of specific projects each Minister will run during the term, or will the Ministers figure it out themselves as they go?

Regarding your decision to renominate @CayonNS: the RMB Mayor position has received some criticism recently for taking what is essentially a Culture Ministry initiative, elevating it as if it is a directly elected role granting “choice” to “the RMB” (as if that is a distinct part of the region), and having no filter on the quality, dedication, or security of the candidates who might be elected. Will the Government retain the RMB Mayor program as it is currently set up? Or will it be modified or eliminated?

I want to hear the specific agenda that your Legislative Coordinator will be tasked with.

I also want to hear what specific programs your Director of Technology plans to take a look at this term. Systematizing and supporting technological systems is a worthy goal, but I want to know what current issues this role is intended to solve and what projects the Director will prioritize.

I think this is a strong part of your platform, but it is a lot of “we can do A, we can do B, we can do C”.

If we confirm you, what will you do on these items? Please be as specific as possible about actionable steps and the order you will do them in.

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Hi! Thanks for the questions. I left out a lot of details (like most agendas do) just to keep it short and not boring.

  • For the introductions, I have a couple ideas. One of the more “informal” ones is to simply manually guide new people willing to join the community with a short template guide on the RMB like some people already do. I also discussed an idea with Heli of adding Discord welcome messages, through modifying Coconut or adding a separate bot (I can do this on my own if needed), which will also guide new users to get involved instead of the introducing process being done manually and quite inconsistently. In my opinion, it’ll make it much more consistent and will save us a lot of time. Like I said in the debate you hosted, our established members should be connected with new people and guide them to the way of TSP.
    I want to essentially automate a lot of the introduction process, make it more coherent and efficient, so that our new members get a structured way of getting introduced to the region.
    We can also always improve on our existing guides by making it simpler, shorter, more coherent, etc


  • For awards and recognition (I’m not sure if you were mentioning this, but I’ll say it anyways), I’m gonna keep the similar idea used by the previous MoI of encouraging members through awards. I have a couple ideas for awards, mainly “Government Official of the Month” to highlight someone new that has gotten into government and has done a commendable job, “Most Active User” for the most active people on the RMB, and other things of that vein. I want to “gameify” being involved in our region to encourage more involvement and make it more enjoyable for everyone.

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Will each MoC have their own “separate responsibilities” or will they act as having the same ones? What guarantee are we given that this will bring more benefits than harm? What will you, or your MoCs, do to ensure that the schedules are aligned and don not interfere with each other? How will a possible disagreement between the two be resolved? Will either of them have “priority” in a possible discussion/decision-making process?

What is your administration’s legislative agenda?

What do you mean by “lower appointments”, exactly?

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Thank you to Prime Minister-elect Heliseum for the nomination and to the Assembly for the chance to present my plans if confirmed as Director of Technology.

Who am I?

Hi, I’m Pronoun. I’ve served in various roles here in the South Pacific, including terms as Prime Minister or otherwise in the Cabinet. One thing you might not know about me, however, is that I’ve also worked on various personal software projects during my time on NationStates. Depending on what you do in the South Pacific, some projects that you may have seen or used before are:

  • PurĂ©e, a military tool for identifying regions that may have been tagged;
  • discourse-fancy-lists, a Discourse plugin that enables a Markdown extension supporting additional list types, like the lettered lists in our laws; and
  • Founding Rates (I haven’t really named it), a website showing how many nations are (re)founded, and which regions they’re (re)founded in.

My goal is not to be the South Pacifican who writes the best software, but rather to combine my governmental and technical experience to bridge the gap between our government and our tech.

Why have a Director of Technology?

My experience, when I was in the Cabinet, was that our technical efforts and expertise often lacked coordination. To give some concrete examples:

  • We have a regional graphics repository, which is sometimes passed down like tribal knowledge, but it hasn’t been changed in two years, in part because knowledge of how to actually update or use it is limited.[1]
  • We have a system for dispatches — in Viet’s words, they “just volunteer” — but it can feel like an opaque system and that results in some friction in updating them. (For instance, this past term, the Cabinet announced a new Getting Involved wizard but our welcome dispatch still links to the old one.)
  • We sort of have a system for managing regional nations, but also not really. I know there’s a couple of stragglers on my personal autologin.

I don’t blame anyone for these challenges — most players sign up for a government simulation, not a software engineering simulation — but I hope to leverage my personal experience with technical matters to improve them. Where ministers have specific technical questions or needs, I’m happy to assist; where they don’t, I hope to spend my time building the foundations for easier on-ramps in the future. My goal as Director of Technology is not to mandate the use of specific tech or to lead government-backed software development, but rather to undertake a birds-eye comparison of the tech we have versus the tech we want and map out the status and feasibility of different ideas for future improvement.

I realize that ‘Director of Technology’ is a new title — the Prime Minister and I discussed the matter, and ultimately we wanted to let the Assembly have a chance to discuss and vote — but I expect that, if confirmed, I would spend more time ‘between’ ministries than ‘in’ a ministry. I’ve outlined some of my own experiences and ideas above, but my goal is to listen to the experiences of others in government and support our technical needs across different areas of government, meeting folks where they’re at, rather than pursuing an agenda of my own specific tech ideas.

What are my goals for the term?

Some examples of projects I’m considering are:

That said, these ideas largely come from the technical gaps I perceived during my time in Cabinet, and I don’t want to presume that those are the same gaps that others will feel during the upcoming term. These are some of the ideas I’ll bring to the table, but I also want to meet ministers where they’re at. Thus, my more general goals are to:

  • Increase accessibility. It’s not always clear how to use our tech. As Director of Technology, I will write documentation to make these technologies more accessible for members of our government, including those without prior technical experience, to support them in more efficiently and effectively fulfilling their responsibilities and implementing their agendas.
  • Improve visibility. There’s no point making our tech easy to use if nobody knows it exists. As Director of Technology, I will proactively coordinate with ministers on where our tech may be useful for their needs, including sharing updates on technical developments as they progress and also identifying areas of friction where tech could grease the gears.
  • Plan future improvements. From my experience, we have more tech than we tend to think, but there is also certainly tech that could be useful which we don’t currently have. As Director of Technology, I will cooperate with ministers to identify where those gaps lie and build a list of future areas of software development that could help fill those gaps.
  • Support South Pacificans writing software. At present, there isn’t a clear pathway for South Pacificans who’d like to work on tech to know what projects or needs exist. As Director of Technology, I will scope out plans for future improvements in terms of their feasibility, with the aim of producing not just a list of ideas for projects but rather concrete ideas so even newer coders can have somewhere to start.[4]

  1. A brief aside: I think “copy the Imgur link from another dispatch” is currently easier than using the graphics repository, but using the graphics repository, we could also do cool things like animated SVGs. I think Europeia uses this well in their dispatch banner. ↩

  2. To the best of my knowledge, we had one years ago, but I don’t know the specific features it had. (Try searching “OWL bot” on Discord and you’ll find just some scattered mentions over the years — of which there are more questions than answers.) I know Em listed some feature requests back in 2023. ↩

  3. I think we’ve manually posted some this past term, but this is also something that can be and has been automated, such as by The Pacific, Europeia, The East Pacific, and probably others as well. ↩

  4. To be honest, NationStates is how I got my start! ↩

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Prime Minister elect @Heliseum

Thank you for the nominations of your Cabinet.

First of all, @xshotss, what timeframe can the Government commit to in the implementation of consistent telegram recruitment? Will we be looking at telegram bots like Europeia’s Asperta or do we have a home grown version that we can use for TSP for manual recruitment? How will recruit recruiters and make recruitment competitive?

@CayonNS and @Flaming: As nominees for Minister of Culture, what is the Government’a plan in relation to RMB roleplay on Knowhere?

@Utopia: In my view, you are by far the most qualified pick for Minister of Defence by a long shot. What role do you see the South Pacific Special Forces playing in the Defender sphere? Will you aim to have the SPSF to play a more leading role in Libcord or on anti fascist operations?

@Heliseum and @ProfessorHenn: What iniatives will you committ to on behalf of the Government to increase government accountability and communication to the Assembly? Will you commit to bi weekly updates of the Government to the Assembly?

@Heliseum and @Pronoun: I welcome Pronoun’s nomination as Director of Technology and think they are perfectly qualified to do such a role. I also believe that a whole of government approach to improving our technological capability is sorely needed. What technological innovations are you seeking to implement over the course of the term?

@Heliseum @eternalraven213 and @xshotss: I know I harp on about this continually but what is the Government’s plan to increase the WA endorsement count of the Delegate and to encourage a more active WA culture?

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That’s a good and complex question @Langburn. I think there’s a lot of good things that OWL Office is starting or bringing back. First and foremost, we must update all of our existing products. It starts with us pushing out the voting recommendation analysis on the regional talking board, updating the master dispatch with the most updated information, and the emphasis on having World Assembly proposal writers in our own region. I think with time and the opportunity I am given, I am confident we can elevate the OWL Office to where it should be. With the General Assembly reset coming soon, we need to be ready to capture that opportunity to establish ourselves as one of the top programs in NationStates. I plan to reach out to other World Assembly leaders in our circle of embassies to establish a communications network to strengthen our efforts there. When it comes to our endorsement count, sometimes we just need to emphasize the importance of what endorsing our World Assembly Delegate does for us. I think that starts with interacting on the talking board and with our population that’s not on discord or the forum. We are looking at ways to possibly increase our voting numbers because I am shocked with our low turnout. We have a few SC commendations we want to get written that will honor some of our legendary citizens here in TSP. It’s going to take time and a collective team effort. I am enthusiastic about being the OWL Director. With time, you will see a massive shift in the direction of our department.

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In my post above, I listed several tentative plans (OWL bot, outreach telegrams, RMB welcomes). I say tentative for two main reasons:

  • I’ll discuss these plans with ministers and other government officials, and priorities might change as a result. Other officials might have ideas that could offer more immediate benefit, or might no longer have a need for some of the ideas I’ve raised. My goal is to support tech that helps implement the agendas, not to create tech that sets the agendas.
  • I think the role of the Director of Technology is — in Heli’s words — to “track, systematize and support” tech development and adoption more than it is to be a programmer-in-chief. As Director of Technology, one of my goals would be to identify the technical gaps and project ideas that exist, which members (including myself) can contribute to, but I don’t mean to assert control over what tech our community members choose to work on.
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I think we can get something going pretty fast. In the first couple of days, I’d just focus on getting a consistent manual system in place, clear templates, making sure people know what to send and when. That alone already helps a lot. For the tech side, I’m already in contact with my PM about people who can help us improve on our infrastructure, so the plan would be to only have a home-grown system instead of relying on another region’s tech.

As for getting people to actually recruit, I think it’s mostly about making it visible and a bit competitive. A “Recruiter of the Week” is a nice idea, but I don’t think it’s realistic to automate this process so it’ll probably be done manually. I also want to keep all of our recruitment work logged in a spreadsheet, and that’ll help massively with recognizing hard-working people in our team.

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In general, I am trying to allow the apointees to answer questions specific to the their agendas or the content of what they will do in office, but I will step in directly to answer questions about general structure and why I appointed in the ways that I did. I’ll get to these a couple at a time over the night!

Up first:

(answering both of these together because they are very connected)

This was a decision that came out of an informed reflection of the last term’s Culture set-up. My understanding, from what I’ve seen working in the Cabinet alongside them and from conversations with the last administration, was that Tin was a deputy in name only. Cayo and Tin worked collaboaratively on essentially equal footing, both were assembly confirmed, with the full access and mandate that that carries. I felt that assembly-confirming someone as a Deputy to do the same work as a full Minister was a bit silly. I was told that things really benefitted from the collaborative process that arose from two people working together on these culture projects.

I am not planning on delineating for them which projects each will do from the outset. I will work with them directly to divide the labor, but will be encouraging them to work collaboratively as much as possible. Indeed, they told me (before I asked them to do so!) that they were preparing a joint agenda to present to the Assembly soon. I don’t feel like most of culture planning is so synchronous that different schedules will be a hinderance, in fact I think having multiple people who could each run an event gives us greater flexibility in when we can schedule things. In the unlikely event that they simply cannot agree on something, that is where I will have to step in as Prime Minister to make a final call.

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I use “lower appointments” here as a catch all for those positions with narrow focus that do not act with the authrity of the cabinet. These could be newspaper editors, recruiters, etc, depending on the exact desires of the confirmed ministers and interest we get.

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Has the PM made a final decision about renominating the three sitting Ministers formally or not? And, relatedly, will they submit agendas to the Assembly (regardless of if formally nominated or not)?

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If the Assembly wills it, I am happy for them to submit to a vote formally.

I have instructed each of them, alongside all of the new appointees, to post an agenda. I will commence poking and prodding all of them to hurry up in doing so.

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I second

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I motion for a vote.

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Are we in a rush? More than half of the nominees have not posted an agenda, or even at the very least acknowledged in this topic their appointments being put forward.

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What formal mechanism would you prefer to come from the Prime Minister specifically?

I know you’ve previously referenced how Kris re-nominated existing ministers during his term as Prime Minister, but I think he just said pretty much the same thing Heliseum has said — the gist being “I intend to retain these ministers, I believe a vote is not legally required, but I have no objections if the Assembly wants to vote.” My understanding is that we held a vote in that case not because the Prime Minister did anything formally, but rather because there was a motion and second from legislators to hold a vote on the retained ministers, which the Chair interpreted as an unwritten resolution on the matter.

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I wouldn’t say a rush. I’d say it would be good to get the cabinet into office before the PM’s honeymoon period is over. I’d like to see if we can get plans from the nominees for their post.