Revisions to Sunshine Act

Assembly
1

A few days ago, there was some discussion on the Discord about Sunshine reports. Namely, about how we don’t really do them anymore (and haven’t since we moved to the Discourse forum or even for some time before then).

Now, there are probably a lot of reasons why for this. I personally think that the biggest one is that Sunshine reports are generally a chore that government institutions must fulfill that isn’t actually related to the organization’s core function. People don’t run for Prime Minister in order to document and declassify conversations, they run for Prime Minister because they have an executive agenda they want to pursue. Since we’re in an entirely volunteer-based game where people do activities that motivate them, this means the tasks don’t get done.

The solution for that isn’t to crack the whip and say “well, the PM needs to do Sunshine reports!” After all, many PMs for years have not been doing them. (Even back when they were done regularly, we were usually a term or two behind on them!) I’m not sure the last time a non-executive institution did a Sunshine report, but it’s been a hot minute for them as well.

At the same time, we can’t totally abandon government transparency as a practice. Lots of parts of our government make decisions behind a veil of secrecy, which is at times necessary (say for the SPSF handling a sensitive military operation or the High Court requiring secrecy to maintain its independence while a decision is being drafted). However, after the fact, disclosure is necessary so that we can hold officials accountable.

In response to this, I’ve proposed this compromise proposal.

  • For the Executive, they would put out a monthly government activities report. The government will have an incentive to do this because it also serves as an opportunity to communicate with the public about your accomplishments and activities, something that Cabinets used to do with regularity but has fallen by the wayside recently. The report has to contain a summary of all significant discussions within the executive. If anyone wants to see the actual contents of something that is in the report, they can make a request to see the discussion and (if seconded) the government will be compelled to produce the discussion.
  • For non-Executive bodies, they will do two disclosures a year (Feb 1 and August 1). Those dates were picked so as to not overlap with other parts of our TSP legislative calendar, but I’m open to changing them. I shifted this from the prior “tell us 6 months after it’s over” requirement, largely because institutions have a difficult time keeping track of already-concluded conversations.
  • I added a provision to clarify that Citizenship Committee and Administration are excluded from the law. While I know CitComm comes under fire a lot, there is nothing that could be disclosed from CitComm’s private areas without disclosing PII which would help in addressing those concerns. The reasons for excluding the Administration Team are more obvious.

I’m open to feedback on any portion of this – especially the organization and drafting. I don’t really consider legislative drafting as part of my NS skillset, but wanted to put a proposal out there for debate and discussion. Full credit to @Quebecshire for discussing some of these ideas with me before I drafted.

Sunshine Act

An act to periodically publish threads in private government forums

1. Documentation

(1) Discussion within a government institution that leads to a motion or a decision by that institution into taking deliberate action or inaction beyond that institution’s inner working area is to be considered significant discussion.

(2) All significant private discussions of government institutions must be documented on the regional forums for the purpose of persistence and posterity.

(3) Significant discussions occurring via real-time communication methods may be quoted verbatim or reasonably summarized on the forums, as deemed most reasonable by that institution. If the communication via such a method cannot be saved, meeting minutes must be taken of that discussion.

(2) Portions of discussions may be withheld from release if:

  1. if the public release of information contained therein threatens the security of the region or an ally,
  2. if any personally identifiable information is contained therein, or
  3. if they contain diplomatic conversations with other regions or organizations.

(3) A discussion may be released in a redacted form by copying the discussion and censoring information not intended for public consumption. The normative copy of the discussion thread must then remain in the private forum.

(4) If reasonably possible, the institution should strive to release discussions containing classified information in redacted form, rather than withholding them. Any personally identifiable information must always be redacted upon release.

(5) The provisions of this law will not be construed as applying to the Citizenship Committee or the Administration Team.

2. Executive Government updates

(1) The Prime Minister or their designee shall provide a Government Update on all significant discussions relevant to the Cabinet or executive functions other than the military occurring since the previous Government Update between the 1st and 3rd day of each calendar month. The update must contain a summary of the discussion itself and any action steps taken.

(2) After release of the Government Update, any citizen may request the release of the full contents of any significant discussions recorded in the Government Update. Such a request must be seconded by another citizen in order to compel disclosure. Upon receipt of such a request, the Prime Minister or their designee must provide a full disclosure of the significant discussion within 72 hours, unless the discussion or a portion of it falls under the withholding criteria outlined in 1(2).

(3) Any citizen may request the disclosure of a significant discussion from the private areas of the South Pacific Special Forces. Such a request must be seconded by another citizen in order to compel disclosure. Upon receipt of such a request, the Admiralty must provide a full disclosure of significant discussion within 72 hours. In addition to withholding materials under the withholding criteria outlined in 1(2), the Admiralty will also withhold materials which might give undue public information about capabilities, training, or methods of the military or records which are related to personnel matters.

3. Other Government Institution Updates

2. Publishing of Discussions

(1) The significant discussions of an all non-Executive institutions shall, in due time, be released for public archival accessible to all members of the South Pacific.

(2) The release of significant discussions for non-Executive institutions shall occur on the 1st of February and August of each year. The release will include all discussions from the previous six months which are concluded (meaning no further action or discussion is reasonably expected) at the time of release. If a discussion from prior to the previous report was not released because the discussion had not yet concluded but there has not been any subsequent discussion, then it will be released with discussions which concluded during the previous six months.

(2) The release of discussions shall occur at the following times:

  1. For a Prime Minister term, discussions from the executive branch shall be released no later than 6 months after the completion of that term:

  2. Discussions of the February to April term are due for release in October.

  3. Discussions of the May to July term are due for release in January.

  4. Discussions of the August to October term are due for release in April.

  5. Discussions of the November to January term are due for release in July.

  6. For a High Court case, they shall be released no later than 6 months after the ruling or, if appealed, the ruling on the appeal, has been announced.

(3) Discussions may be withheld from release if

  1. they are ongoing or directly related to another ongoing discussion,

  2. if the public release of information contained therein threatens the security of the region or an ally,

  3. if any personally identifiable information is contained therein, or

  4. if they contain diplomatic conversations with other regions or organizations.

(4) A discussion may be released in a redacted form by copying the discussion and censoring information not intended for public consumption. The normative copy of the discussion thread must then remain in the private forum.

(5) If reasonably possible, the institution should strive to release discussions containing classified information in redacted form, rather than withholding them. Any personally identifiable information must always be redacted upon release.

34. Audits of Discussions

(1) The High Court, as part of a case, may compel an institution to grant the Court insight into related discussions.

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2

Especially other people’s conversations :face_with_tongue:

I feel like this is maybe fine as a transparency mechanism. But as a citizen, I don’t need the Cabinet to list their accomplishments to me each month after they’re done — I’d like to get announcements for things that interest me in time for me to engage with them. For example, maybe it’s cool that some festival was held in the past month, but it would be cooler to hear about it beforehand so I can participate in it. I mean, sure, additional communication doesn’t hurt, but I feel like the political incentive here depends on the leadership style and that, at least in some cases, we’ll still run into the “People don’t run for Prime Minister in order to document and declassify conversations” problem.

In any case, it seems a little odd to me that the government update is required to summarize all significant discussions — even those that may be withheld — and that withholding only applies when citizens request the discussion be released. What would that summary say that wouldn’t be withheld?

I get that compliance with this varies, but I still think it’s generally a good idea to encourage this?

I don’t think the deadline is super helpful. First, there already exists some political pressure from at least two citizens requesting a specific discussion, which I think is substantively different from our current system where the pressure comes from a date on the calendar. Second, ideally, if institutions are using a platform actually suited to documentation, then public disclosure in most cases should just mean submitting a mod/admin request for a topic to be made public, which means it’s effectively a deadline for the mod/admin team rather than the institution itself.

I feel like this could just be moved to 1(2) then, both stylistically and also because I think it’s plausible that, for instance, the Admiralty could discuss information about their capabilities with other institutions.

More generally, though, what is the model for discussions between multiple institutions? I feel like this current draft would require multiple disclosures (possibly at different times) from the different institutions involved. For instance, let’s say the Cabinet, Admiralty, CRS, and Delegate discuss the delegate transition together. I think this current draft could plausibly require each of these these separate disclosures:

  • The Cabinet must summarize the conversation in their Government Update. It seems plausible, and in fact probable, that a Cabinet member is going to perform some executive action (update the WFE, change the banner, pin a dispatch, etc.) at some point during the delegate transition.
  • The Admiralty might be exempt, depending on whether it’s still considered a “private area of the South Pacific Special Forces.” I guess you could argue it’s not private since there are other institutions as well, but then I think very little is. For instance, if the Prime Minister appoints a Minister of Defense as a member of the Admiralty instead of themselves, then would any area with both the Admiralty and the Prime Minister no longer be considered private?
  • The CRS would release the (same?) discussion on the next February 1 or August 1.
  • The Delegate would release the (same?) discussion on the next February 1 or August 1.
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I’m generally in agreement with what Pronoun said about the first part of this bit; requiring that the Cabinet list their accomplishments after-the-fact seems like superfluous busywork. If anything, I feel like requiring the release of a monthly agenda (for the upcoming month) would be a more effective way of giving people an idea of what the Cabinet is working on without just reiterating what has already been done; after all, let’s be honest: those that would actually bother to read these reports are those that would have already been paying attention to what actions have been taken. With that being said, I am not suggesting that we should legislate this, as I believe that allowing for a level of flexibility is generally a good thing, and executive agencies shouldn’t feel constrained to a specific, rigid plan (particularly not something like the MoFA).

With that, I also have to say that (and this may just be me) but I’m not sure the law as you wrote it would necessarily require that in all cases, anyway:

Does this not require updates monthly only on actions taken following significant discussions? Though executive actions taken without prior significant discussion are (probably) exceedingly rare, I’d imagine they could happen, and be excluded from falling under this requirement. Am I reading this wrong?

I also agree with the point that there needs to be a model for the singular disclosure of discussions between multiple institutions.

Otherwise, I am very much in agreement with this revision.

4

I am broadly receptive to these proposed changes. A few thoughts:

  1. I think it is a bit weird to exclude the SPSF from executive releases. It is already public record what moves our military makes (it’s in the world activity list in-game). I by no means am suggesting we need to be that detailed, but saying that they ran X# detagging operations, Y# chases, and Z# liberations, etc., is already a precedent the SPSF has utilized and should be considered as part of the sunshine process. Discussions of promotions/demotions/discipline should also be released periodically (albeit adequately redacted), especially if we, as legislators, want a better context for why we should confirm a new admiral when that need arises.

  2. I think it might make sense to move the disclosure window for the executive to the final 1-3 days of the month, so that a new PM is not immediately spending time releasing their predecessor’s records to the public.

  3. I think it would be worthwhile to add CitComm delicately into the law by requiring the disclosure of the counts of each application processed by each member and the number of approvals and denials issued. Those two pieces of info do not get into specifics of PII, and they provide valuable context to the assembly when reconfirmation is considered.

  4. I am intrigued by the ability of a citizen to request disclosure, and am inclined to support it. Though I find seconds a bit wonky outside the context of the assembly. :stuck_out_tongue:

  5. As for whom should release the logs in a shared area, I think codification of whom is responsible for which shared areas is important to consider.

  6. Lastly, I think there should be some sort of formal mechanism in the law that a citizen/legislator can trigger to compel releases when they are late. I don’t know if that would be “suing” the PM, Chief Justice, Delegate, etc. in Court to do it, or a motion/vote by the Assembly. Either way would be fine with me.

5

Okay, here’s an idea for spaces shared between multiple institutions — we create some ordering of relevant institutions (roughly based on how sensitive we expect their discussions typically are, i.e., the one we think is most likely to have a valid reason for withholding or redacting discussions), and in each shared area, the institution highest in that order is in charge of sunshine releases.

What’s wrong with having SPSF releases?

I don’t think the purpose of the Sunshine Act should be to require additional record-keeping and statistic-tracking. The current purpose is “to periodically publish threads in private government forums” — i.e. to publicly release and archive the discussions that already happen. I think requiring additional information to be recorded should be a separate matter. We could require these sorts of activity numbers for other institutions too, like we could require the Delegate and Coral Guard report how many endorsements they’ve given each month, we could require our recruiters to report how many telegrams they’ve sent, etc. But I think it’s a bit odd to treat them like ‘discussions’ to be released, which is what the Sunshine Act is concerned with.

Uh… I think they would be released under this draft?

I’m not really sure what ‘compel’ means here. What would the Court or Assembly even do? Let’s say that citizens request that the Delegate release a discussion and the Delegate says, “sorry, but I’m away on travel for the next week and won’t get to it.” What would compelling a release look like? The Assembly can already recall them if they want to.

1 Like
6

I motion this to a vote.

7

For the sake of clarity please quote the bill you wish to motion.

8

I don’t think this is at a state where it is an effective replacement. I think we should hold off for a bit and get discussion and drafing back up and going.

@HumanSanity did you ever draft that response?

9

I agree with Utopia. This needs further revisions and debate. Motioning to vote right now is premature — it’s on me that I haven’t had motivation to write a response yet, although anyone else is also welcome to attempt a redraft

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