Terpelaziun to the Seneschal

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

Estimat Tuischac'h:

I write to ask when the Seneschal will be addressing the nation with regards to the recent catastrophe with immigration.

For months, there have been zero immigrants and zero applicants.  This is obviously an existential crisis for the country.  Fewer people means no new interest, no new word-of-mouth spread or new ideas, and no new energy.

This fact still doesn't seem to bother the Government.  They were aware of this, with the Seneschal saying that she knew that "immigration pipeline has closed off altogether," but it seems that our elected leaders simply don't care very much about the problem.  When asked to prioritize this problem like the crisis that it is, the Seneschal snarked only that she couldn't, since she'd be criticized for doing so.  This is bizarre.

After I spoke up and demanded answers, the Government finally deigned to look into the problem, and the Seneschal discovered that the immigration form had simply stopped forwarding applications completely.  It's been a couple of days, and we haven't heard anything further.  It is unclear if this has been fixed.  It is unclear why the Seneschal failed so completely on this essential component of governance.  It is unclear if the Government even cares about any of this at all, unless someone is making them care with terpelaziuns.

Why did it take sharp prodding to get the Government to spend a few minutes investigating this problem?  Why wasn't this treated like the all-hands-on-deck crisis that it is?

This Government has failed the people through its negligence.  The citizens of the Kingdom of Talossa deserve to know why they have failed, and how they will fix the situation.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

I thank the member for his question.

The staff of the Ministry of Technology are poking around in the backend of the Wordpress setup that controls talossa.com to try to find out why it stopped sending out emails sometime in early August. Until we find that out, the Ministry of Immigration is manually checking the "innards" of the Immigration form every so often to look for new applications. We know that it's not a problem with email per se: "immigration@talossa.com" is perfectly functioning for receiving and sending emails.

The wider issue here seems to have been a problem with the handover from the previous Government. The previous Minister of Technology - who became the new Permanent Secretary of Backend Admin - informs us that he was never in charge of the Wordpress backend, and he knows nothing about it. Apparently other members of the previous Government were dealing with the Wordpress backend on an "informal basis" - something which was improper given the authorising legislation, and which led to a disastrous "dropping of the ball" when the Government changed. We implore anyone associated with the previous Government who can straighten this out to contact us ASAP.

For that reason also, the new Minister of Technology was never given access to the Wordpress backend. The only way we found out about any of this is that I, personally, still had valid credentials, and checked the backend based purely on a "hunch" two days ago. ¡Dïeulaudas! that my old credential still worked.

As previously announced, I have personally written to all the 40 or so applications who were caught in this SNAFU, offering my apologies and begging them to renew their applications.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

Estimat Tuischac'h,

I am grateful for the explanation offered by the Seneschal.  I'm not sure what the "WordPress backend" might be, aside from just having access to post and update it.  I believe I was probably the one who did most of that, since that was a task from the Seneschal that I volunteered to take on when doing the redesign of the site.  I know that the Government must have the same access, since that's how basic updates and posting of La C'hronică happens.

But while the technical explanation is interesting, whatever it may be it doesn't seem to address the main point.

For months, there were zero immigrants.  For months, there were zero immigration applications.  And the Government simply doesn't seem to care. 

I mean, okay, no one made a WordPress account for a member of the Cabinet.  That's not great, and you guys should do better.  And okay, there was a technical problem with the immigration form.  Also not ideal, but it's not the end of the world, and we can probably get it fixed.  I'm happy to volunteer to help, in fact.

But why doesn't the Government seem to care that immigration has flatlined?

It shouldn't take members of the opposition to notice and nag about this.  This is one of the most fundamental functions of our government... why is there so little interest that no one bothered to spend the few minutes it took to discover the solution?  The first response was so casually disinterested... "Oh, we want to open a new subforum called the Landing Pier maybe, and also we'll do some social media but we're not doing that stuff right now."

And now, when the Seneschal is asked when she will inform the people of this serious problem, almost the entire answer seems to be an attempt to pass on the blame.  But whatever the technical problem, the Minister of Immigration and Seneschal should have noticed and cared that immigration was at zero.

So I will repeat my question, since it was not answered: I ask when the Seneschal will be addressing the nation with regards to the recent catastrophe with immigration.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

I thank the member for his question.

I did notice, and I did care, that immigration applications had ceased. It was something of a relief to finally discover that it was due to a technical SNAFU, because Cabinet discussions on the subject had found us stumped as to what we might be doing wrong. But perhaps it was because of the presumption - shared, it seems by the Opposition - that it was due to bad government policy that no-one thought to check whether the website was b0rked until two days ago.

I confess myself puzzled as how the member expects me to "address the nation", and what he feels the content of such an address should be. I feel that my replies to various Terpelaziuns have been full and frank.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

Estimat Tuischac'h,

For months, there were zero immigrants and zero immigration applications.  When asked about this, the Most Honourable Seneschal gave the verbal equivalent of a shrug.

One suggestion I keep raising is for a Landing Pier on Wittenberg, open to "interested parties" (on pain of ruthless moderation) who might not be ready for citizenship yet - the technical people in the back room have got it on their to-do list down the line.

... The best means towards that is our social media outreach, which has unfortunately been hampered due to the respective Minister's extra-Talossan commitments.

So, with no exaggeration, we were facing a failure that threatens the future of the country.  The Government didn't know why, and they had very few solutions to offer... but they weren't even trying them!  Maybe a visitor's forum would help in some way, "down the line."  Social media outreach, the "best means" to address the problem in the Seneschal's opinion, also wasn't happening.

Why doesn't the Government seem to care about this?  People who care, try!

It wasn't until I began demanding answers in an emphatic fashion that she bothered to check if there was a technical problem with the system.  A half an hour later, she reported back that she'd identified the issue.  What if I didn't open up Infoteca to check on the latest numbers?  What if she'd brushed me off -- I have a grand total of 5 seats, what am I going to do if the Government stonewalls me?

My concern is not the specifics of the problem.  They're interesting, but the Seneschal is ultimately responsible for caring about how things are going, and acting if there's a serious problem, and communicating with the citizens without needing someone to drag it out of her.

So I suppose I'd suggest that the Seneschal first apologize for this failure, give concise information about it without hamfisted excuses, and then discuss her plans to restore the immigration rate.