(06-06-2021, 03:34 PM)Purple Hyacinth Wrote: How do you envision the work of community building being spread among the members of the SPSF? For example, how much of the work do you want to do yourself vs. delegating to others, how much of a leadership role you will give to members, etc.

I have a piece I submitted to TSJ about the idea of community building in a regional military which will hopefully come out shortly and can maybe provide more detail about the theory behind my ideas for community building. (Part of my existing section on community building is reframed language from that article, although the full article will provide more context.)

As to how to do it, this is the area of my platform that is least able to be handled via a set of policy proposals, so the concept of “delegating” it is odd. As I explain in my main platform, culture is something you create not only by maintaining a friendly presence and persona in the chat but also in collaboration with other members of the community. Community and culture amounts to how we interact with one another on a daily basis, and as a result it is the thing least in the control of the Minister of Defense to simply wave their hands and "create" it.

Despite this, the leadership of a community plays a meaningful role in shaping its direction, and I’d do my best to be the culture I wish to see and use the influence of a position of leadership to institutionalize and maintain that community. As to the characteristics of that community, I have described them above: a strong military r/d community should be positive, autonomous, and self-reliant. To this end, I would make regular efforts to congratulate SPSF members on their accomplishments (spotting raids, contributing in a group discussion, a fast chase speed, etc.), encourage SPSF members to talk about their non-r/d or even non-NS interests casually with other SPSFers, and I would prioritize the development of an SPSF internal barracks discussion culture rather than exporting our off update chat culture fully to Libcord’s general chat or the NSGP server. I have thus far tried to avoid relying on my past experience elsewhere to support this campaign, but since these elements are largely about performance in day-to-day interactions I will point to my time as Delegate of XKI where I made a pointed “return home” relative to my predecessor in terms of the Delegate's presence in the community by maintaining activity on the Discord, forum, and RMB in non-governmental situations, which I believe contributed in part (although certainly not in whole) to XKI’s internal cultural revival during my term and the few months prior.

Another element of this is structured efforts to build community. This would take the form of periodically (likely once every 2ish weeks) having the SPSF conduct low stakes operations (e.g. detags, Officer training, chasing a smaller tagging party, etc.) out of its own channels rather than Libcord in order to help create a distinctive sense of SPSF community and running cultural events for the SPSF (e.g. tetrio or skribblio games before or after update). Additionally, the work done with Media/Engagement will give individual SPSFers a greater platform to define their experience within the SPSF and work in tandem with the community vision I describe above, where members are given opportunities to celebrate their work and accomplishments.

As to who will conduct these things, I am willing to do the work on these cultural items but if others would like to, I certainly will not decline help. Part of my goal for this culture is openness and people feeling they can step up and help "run the Ministry".

(06-06-2021, 03:34 PM)Purple Hyacinth Wrote: How will you promote transparency and accountability?

Transparency and accountability are particularly important for the Ministry of Defense. Of the 5 Ministries, its work requires the highest amount of technical knowledge and expertise to understand its work product. I agree with Quebec that providing Assembly-digestible statements about our operations is important for Assembly oversight and will endeavor to provide that. In past government work, I’ve maintained a public “office thread” where I post periodic updates on projects and accomplishments, often in list format. I would continue that if elected Minister of Defense and include both specific information about large operations (e.g. major defenses/liberations/anti-fascist operations) and aggregate information about smaller operations (e.g. chasing/detag runs). I would also be willing to take questions from the Assembly in the office thread or in #legislators-lounge.

An area where I do not agree with Quebec is about moving SPSF mission reports to Discord. While Discord is a strong method of communication for the SPSF and is frequented by many legislators, it is not appropriate as a platform of record. Further, an SPSF records channel in the MoD section would only be viewable by SPSF members and thus would not satisfy public oversight. While the existing public update records thread has fallen out of date, I believe this is an issue of upkeep rather than structure. As Minister of Defense, I would clarify the personnel authorized to update the reports thread includes the full team of Officers (which, after Luca and I finish training, will include 5 regularly updating SPSFers of Officer rank or above) and also make updating the thread part of my personal weekly to do list (elaborated below) should it have fallen behind. Fortunately, updating this thread is not strenuous work, it simply requires periodically devoting a few minutes to it. While these records are technical and possibly not useful to many legislators, providing the “raw data” in a public format in addition to Minister/Ministry commentary via the Ministry of Media and/or my office thread means that the Assembly can have the raw information to provide critical oversight of the MoD. It’s the same reason RL government agencies put out both raw data and interpreted data.

As to transparency more broadly, I do not believe it would be appropriate to release officer planning or soldier update chats. Firstly, releasing this information would be incredibly cumbersome as a lot of these chats are casual in nature and thus contain personal information, which would be excessively laborious to redact relative to potential benefit of releasing logs. Second, much of the information is operationally secure even after an operation is complete and even minute details in an update chat can be used by military opponents to undermine future SPSF operations.

I think that came out jumbled, so let me know if you have further questions.

(06-06-2021, 03:34 PM)Purple Hyacinth Wrote: What steps will you take to ensure that all of these objectives get done on time?

So, I’ll start by saying, if I accomplish 50% of what’s in here, I think that’s a “good” term. An “exemplary” term or a term I’m truly proud of is 75+% of it. Disruptions to workflow are especially likely in the Ministry of Defense where a major occupation could cause a days or weeks long headache and stall infrastructure building work. At the same time, I am blessed with an outgoing Minister of Defense who is an active updater and a growing Officer corps that can take the lead in major operational spots, thus giving me more flexibility to focus on the long term and hopefully minimize those disruptions to my workflow. I’ve laid out an ambitious agenda here where we’re not going to truly run out of work to do, and I intend to keep working to get as much of it done as possible.

With that said, I’ll break things into two chunks: weekly tasks and long term projects. Early in my term based on my RL schedule I'll designate a day of the week to take care of certain "upkeep tasks". In the context of my campaign, weekly tasks include:

• Updating the public forum records thread. After it has been set up, this would also include updating the comprehensive member-specific record spreadsheet, provided that has not been delegated to another individual.
  
• Checking on the status of training for new Trainees and for Officers-in-Training and contacting them as appropriate to set up additional training
  
• Updating my office thread with progress on tasks.
  

For long-term projects, I'll break up my priority list into three chunks--early term projects, mid-term projects, and late-term projects. Most of these things are discussed in the main campaign post and then are just referred to here. Let me know if I left anything out, and thank you for the question because writing this down in triaged form is a useful planning exercise on its own.

Early term:

• Coordinate with the Delegate and Minister of Engagement about SPSF promotion in the welcome Dispatches, SWAN, and organizing and updating promotional Dispatches. I would allow other SPSF members to assist with this project if they wish.
  
• Conduct a roster audit. While I don't believe in imposing strict activity requirements, this also serves as an opportunity for me to reach out to our full roster privately about their future plans and how to move them to the next stage of their participation. Perhaps some people will be called back to the SPSF who were previously disengaged. Others may be put on a more forward-oriented track for their training and participation.
  
• Initiate work on a new SPSF spreadsheet-based member-organized record keeping system to supplement the existing records thread. I would offer for another SPSFer to work on this or I will learn how to do it myself and begin the project (would probably be good for me )
  
• Initial round of MoM publications and public recruiting events.
  
• Begin discussions with other defender leaders about how to prepare for future quorum defenses. Begin work on any potential solutions.

Mid-term:

• Continue MoM publications and public recruiting events. Start work with Local Council to host at least one on site event if possible.
  
• Do a check in with Officer Melix about the Tidal Force program. I don't want to do this at the start of the term because TF is still somewhat in its infancy, but after 3-4 months of maturity in the program, we're in a position to assess potentially ramping it up, expanding on-site recruitment, possibly involving more or different people in running it, and moving to working at 2 updates per day.
  
• Begin work with forum administration on potentially adding a private SPSF sub-forum for record-keeping and long-form conversations. Start drafting work for private guides for that sub-forum.
  
• Finalize work on spreadsheet for SPSF record organization by member. Start data entry of past SPSF records.
  

End of term:

• Re-evaluate goals based on available SPSFers as well as their interests and our current operational standing/function.
  
• Potentially do targeted bilateral defender operations with Independent/unaligned militaries and other defender militaries to strengthen targeted military-to-military ties independently of traditional Libcord operations. Adjust this plan based on current happenings.
  
• Continue MoM publications and public recruiting events.
  
• Finalize SPSF record keeping spreadsheet and prepare to hand off to next Minister and the General Corps.
  
• Finish guides for the private SPSF sub-forum so it is ready to use for the next Minister.
  

(06-06-2021, 04:22 PM)Jay Coop Wrote: As a candidate in the MoD election, will you commit to abstaining in the MoD election?

No, I intend to vote for myself in the election. I agree largely with Luca and Quebec's responses in each of their threads to this question.

In a democracy, the public gets to vote, and as a member of that public I don't see why I forfeit that right because I'm a candidate. I think I'd be a good MoD, that's why I'm running, and if I didn't then I shouldn't be running. The integrity of the election is not questioned by me voting as it should not be revolutionary to people that I vote for myself. If my campaign platform, past experience, and general character doesn't convince someone to vote for me, I don't see why my own self-belief would. Not to mention, it all cancels out in a wash since my opponent will also likely vote for themselves, so it has the same effect as if we both abstained. Finally, while this is (likely) a 2 candidate election, in a 3 candidate election if I were eliminated in the first round of IRV, a notion that I should abstain would mean my preference between the other two candidates is invalidated, which takes away my right to have input as a voter.

I do intend to vote privately both due to my personal comfort and because, if I am elected, I want to be able to have strong collegiality with all the other members of the Cabinet regardless of election results.