Public Records Minister

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

It seems to me that it might be a good idea to eliminate this office, and assign its functions (monitoring the Scribery and updating Infoteca) to another member of Cabinet.  I'm not sure however, and certainly any such change would not be made immediately.  I'd be particularly interested in the opinion of @Mic'haglh Autófil, O.Be on this matter, if he's willing to give the benefit of his wisdom.

[Mic’haglh Autófil, O.Be]

To be clear, in this case you are arguing not in favor of keeping multiple roles in as few hands as possible -- something you campaigned on:

Consolidate positions.  Where possible, preference should be given to someone active and letting them serve multiple positions, as opposed to picking less active people to round out the numbers.  If the active person encounters a crisis they're not equipped to handle, then they can ask for help from someone with more expertise but less attention.

But are instead arguing in favor of merging this position with another one outright. Do I understand correctly?

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

I'm not sure it particularly matters whether or not Job A and Job B are done by the same person, versus Job A and Job B being merged into one position.  The key point is that we shouldn't be picking less active people to round out the numbers of the Cabinet, and I still want to avoid that.  Otherwise you end up in a situation where, at any given moment, only 2 out of 5 Ministers are actually doing anything.

As far as I can tell, the Public Records Minister doesn't have a lot to do, and so it seems like it doesn't make sense to have it as a whole Cabinet position.  But you just got done in the job, and I didn't want to reach any hasty conclusions -- maybe there's more than meets the eye, or additional responsibilities I haven't thought of.  Was there more to it?

[Mic’haglh Autófil, O.Be]

The idea behind breaking a massive position (such as the Ministry of STUFF) up into smaller pieces is that smaller workloads are more easily handled. This could be done by, say, dividing them between multiple people, or by lightening the "mental workload" if someone has more than one job -- something like executive dysfunction becomes easier to manage when you break things down into smaller tasks.

Combining the Public Records Ministry with some other office would undo that flexibility.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

Sure, and that makes sense. It's a spectrum, though. That's why I was wondering if there were more duties than met the eye.

Ok, thank you!

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

Also trying to figure out if the Minister of Defense has any regular duties or if that brings anyone any joy at this time, and I think the answer is that it does not.  I think it might make sense to put the Zuavs under someone else and shutter the rest of it.  It's been a long time since we had anyone who liked to do military stuff.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

*stares in "was bashed for neglecting the Ministry of Defence for multiple terms"*

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

As I recall, the big problem was neglecting the Zuavs.  Putting someone in charge of supervising the Zuavs who otherwise has nothing to do is a recipe for perpetuating that problem.

Generally speaking, people probably shouldn't have a job where their only role is to do one thing infrequently.  Since that means that either (a) you're putting an active person in that job rather than someplace where they could be more useful to the people, (b) you're stacking that job on top of other jobs for an active person, which which we're admitting it's not a person's worth of work, or (c) you put in a relatively inactive person who might not do it.  None of those three make a lot of sense.

It's really just a question of management, which is why I think it makes sense to reorganize things.  I mean, you held four roles in your Cabinet (Seneschal, Culture, Immigration, Deputy A-X), and Mic'haglh held five (Deputy Foreign, Distain, Public Records, Technology, and Finance).  If we're stacking so many jobs, probably we need to take a look at the whole system.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

people probably shouldn't have a job where their only role is to do one thing infrequently

That means the less active people never get to do anything ever. It just makes sense to give a low-salience job to someone who wants to be involved but doesn't have much time. Otherwise, you're pushing everyone out of a job except the hyperactive "Miss Rabbit"s.

This is, by the way, why we split up the jobs. When Defence was attached to Foreign, that meant the Foreign Minister had to do Defence stuff as well, even if they weren't interested in it. Multiple portfolios means that Ministers can "mix and match" jobs according to personal preference.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

Sure, but that didn't really work out in practice.  That's why two people had nine jobs between them in your Cabinet -- I mean, as we've established, Public Records wasn't really much of a job.   And that's okay!  I have some people doubling up, too.

Plus, there's still jobs with much less work.  MinFor, for example.  A-X usually doesn't have much to do (although not this time!) and MinFin usually doesn't do much.  There's plenty of jobs to go around, still.  But eleven posts is an unrealistically large number right now.

This might just come down to different management styles, also.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

Plus, there's still jobs with much less work.  MinFor, for example. 

That's a policy choice on your part.

I'm not sure why you're worried about the number of job titles. Public Records exists because we were chopping up the massively overburdened STUFF portfolio - a mega-job which had burned out minister on top of minister because there was just too much to do. And it was much worse before we split Technology out from that. Public Records is mainly putting out La C'hronică, maintaining Infotecă, and everything else remaning from MinSTUFF after we split out Propaganda and DirSTUFF. That's a minor portfolio but it's a job worth doing. If you want to take it on as Seneschal, why not.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

That's a policy choice on your part.

Not really... it has exactly zero regular duties.  Its statutory obligations are opening embassies when requested and supervising BHAID.  So the work it has to do is reaching out and engaging with other states of various kinds.  XPB is going to Microcon for example, with His Majesty, and we're not exactly going to need three deputies to handle all the embassies that need opening while he's gone.

Unless there's other things I'm missing?  I don't want to jump to any conclusions, which is why this thread exists to fish for information before making any decisions.  Did Antaghla do other things that weren't apparent -- like, is there another obligation I forgot?

I'm not sure why you're worried about the number of job titles. Public Records exists because we were chopping up the massively overburdened STUFF portfolio - a mega-job which had burned out minister on top of minister because there was just too much to do. And it was much worse before we split Technology out from that. Public Records is mainly putting out La C'hronică, maintaining Infotecă, and everything else remaning from MinSTUFF after we split out Propaganda and DirSTUFF. That's a minor portfolio but it's a job worth doing. If you want to take it on as Seneschal, why not.

I'm not worried, I just want to make some changes that better reflect the way things work.  I think it's fine the way you did things, but I'd prefer not to have people with so many jobs stacked on them.

Honestly, I almost think that we might want to make things more fluid intentionally, so that responsibilities can be assigned as better suits the staff available.  It might be time to revamp the whole system.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

Its statutory obligations are opening embassies when requested and supervising BHAID.  So the work it has to do is reaching out and engaging with other states of various kinds. 

Yeah, and that's serious business. In my cabinet, Antaglha was point-person (along with the King, as our chief diplomat) for micronational outreach. It was a more significant job in terms of everyday work than, as I think you've noticed, A-Xh or Finance. Unless you want to go back to isolationism.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

Okay. Well, thank you for your perspective on it.

[Breneir Tzaracomprada]

I have spoken previously in support of, and proposed legislation, to eliminate the Defence Ministry, and reform the Zouaves into the Kingdom's unconventional defence force. This would have entailed the creation of branched Zouave units such as the Space Zouaves, Land Zouaves, Air Zouaves, Sea Zouaves, and of course the Time Zouaves (Dr. Who being the most famous member).

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

So I went back through the records, and it looks like it's been a very long time since we were in a position to have ten or eleven people active in ministries.  Instead, it looks like two to four active people, plus a couple of people on the margins.  We also get a lot of variation in terms of the available talent, which also affects how important a job ends up being.

However, the whole system is set up in imitation of bigger countries: here's a set of jobs, here's the people reporting to them, here's their duties.  And so we have always been stacking jobs and assigning deputies to try to juggle stuff among people who can do it.

I was thinking it might make sense to shift to what we might call a different style, where the different portfolios are split up and assigned as needed, with traditional groupings in the same manner as we have now.  You'll notice that this wouldn't end up being a dramatic change, but I thought this would take into account the concerns D:na Miestra mentioned while also addressing the reality of the situation.

Immigration
New Citizen Outreach
National Promotion
Propaganda
Infrastructure
Foreign Outreach
Language Affairs
Home Affairs
Budget
Collectibles
Merchandise
Public Records
Defense

We'd want to retain some specific roles that come with a title:
Avocat-Xheneral
Distain

So in this case, someone who's very good at technology might get Infrastructure and Merchandise, instead of those being split among MinTech and MinProp right now, while also getting Language Affairs if the plan was to build out a new online Treisour database or something.  It would be a more flexible system where we wouldn't need to constantly make exceptions.

I don't know how you would decide on overall job titles, but we could keep some of the traditional ones by attaching titles to each portfolio, and letting people pick which one to use.

I'm not set on this plan, but I thought it was worth bringing up.  I know people might be attached to some of the traditional roles, but it's more important that we're serving the people in a way that makes sense and works better for our limited energies.  Sometimes good government reform means changing things.

One thing I'm stuck on: permanent secretary and civil service oversight.  How would that be assigned?  Does it make sense to have just one supervisor portfolio?  Probably not, so maybe they should be put into categories of Title C and Title D.

[King Txec]

I think that roles such as A-X, MinImm, MinFin, and MinFor should be a statutory minimum. There may be more, but there are several jobs that should carry the weight of Cabinet level and also be subject to Terps and the like.

-Txec R

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

So cut down the number of ministries from eleven to four or so, and then have either the additional portfolios assigned among them or to other ministers?  That makes sense.  That also solves the problem of who's supervising folks.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

Possible outline of a change:

2. The Cabinet shall consist of the officers listed below:

2.1. The Seneschal, heading the Prüma Ministrà, who is responsible for the overall operation and performance of the government.

2.1.1.  The Seneschal shall perform all duties assigned to his office by Organic Law. All other Cabinet officers are appointed by the Seneschal, serve at his pleasure, are responsible to him, and derive their powers from him. The Seneschal may perform any official act on behalf of his ministers.

2.1.2.  The Seneschal may at any time designate a deputy minister to be Acting Minister, until the Seneschal or the Minister for whom they are acting publicly declare otherwise, or the Minister for whom they are acting is dismissed.

2.1.3.  The Seneschal may issue executive orders, collectively known as Prüms Dideux.

2.1.3.1. A Prüm Diktat, as provided by Org.VI.4., requires the King's countersignature to become enforceable and has the force of law. It's used to enact or amend statutes, to authorise emergency spending, to remove the Clerk of the Court,or in all situations where the Legeu Orgänic or el Lexhatx explicitly require for it or for the King's countersignature.  The Seneschal should issue Prüm Diktats with caution and respect, and leave legislation solely for democratic consideration by the whole Ziu, except when is deemed necessary an urgent action.

2.1.3.2. A Prüm Dirixhaziun is used to declare a month of recess, to issue memorials, congratulatory notices, internal Government organisation decisions and policy statements, executive policy clarifications, and other appropriate and limited governmental matters, and in all situations where the law provides for the Seneschal to act alone without the King's assent.

2.1.4. The Seneschal may appoint a Distain, who shall serve in the Prime Ministry as deputy to the Seneschal, and shall perform such duties as are delegated to him by the Seneschal. All acts thus delegated and performed shall have the same effect as if performed by the Seneschal himself.

2.2.  The Immigration Minister, who will oversee the immigration experience.

2.3. The Avocat-Xheneral, who will oversee the justice system.

2.3.1. Supervises Scribe and Archivist

2.4. The Chancellor, who will oversee foreign affairs and defense.

2.4.1.  Supervises Zuavs and Burgermeister

3.  The Seneschal will also be responsible for managing other obligations, either within the Prüma Ministrà, or by assigning them to members of the Cabinet, or by elevating additional officers to administer them.

3.1.  New Citizen Outreach
3.2.  National Promotion
3.3.  Propaganda (including L'Chronica)
3.4.  Infrastructure (Websites)
3.5.  Cultural Institutions (Language, supervising Poet Laureate and Royal Society)
3.6.  Home Affairs
3.7.  Budget
3.8.  Merchandise (including TalossaWare)
3.9.  Public Records (including Infoteca)

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

> claims to be annoyed at there being 10 or 11 ministerial portfolios
> wants to turn it into 15 ministerial portfolios