| Report on the situation within MoRA |
My fellow Legislators,
As most of you have noticed, there has been somewhat of an upheaval within the Ministry of Regional Affairs in the past few days. In part, that was due to actions I have taken that, as far as I can tell, have no precedent in the 4 years that this office has been established. In the interests of transparency and accountability, I have decided that the only viable course of action is to brief the Assembly on what was done, the motivations behind those actions, my analysis on the situation, and the plan moving forward. In all of this, I will avoid naming particular names as much as possible; the intent of this brief is not to pin blame on anybody in particular. I sincerely apologize for the giant wall of text, but there was no way to compress this further without stripping important details away. Please read this text in its entirety before forming an opinion on its contents, as many things referenced early on are then clarified or expanded upon later. Summary Within the Ministry of Regional Affairs leadership, an echo chamber had inadvertently evolved in which some misguided (but not malicious) thoughts with respect to their role in the region as well as the Assembly. Due to their self-enforced isolation, reasonable and legitimate criticisms toward the merits of a MoRA split and the process of pursuing it and the tone that was used were bottled up, but I could find no evidence of any malice or bad faith. The chamber has been opened up and there will be some changes in the Ministry, including the Minister spot itself. Preceding Events The idea of splitting the Regional Affairs ministry into its component parts certainly isn't new (I remember it being mentioned during the 2016 Great Council, even). What is new this time is that there is an actual concerted effort at implementing such a split. When the subject first came up in the Assembly, there was a significant pushback from individuals working top level jobs within the ministry - that was neither unexpected nor in any way out of bounds. In any case, it was these individuals debating in their roles as Legislators, guided by their experience within the ministry. On the other side, one of the more vocal proponents for a split was Jay, who drafted the package that ended up going to vote. Even though this package failed to pass due to the required supermajority, there was still (barely) a majority of Legislators in favor, so it was no surprise that the debate was taken up again later. In February, Jay was elected as Minister of Regional Affairs, in part because it was expected that Jay would implement the trappings of a split ministry as a test run. Specifically, Jay adapted the previous system established by Rebeltopia two terms prior: Next to the Senior Fellows and Advisory Council, there would be three Deputy Ministers for each "category" of MoRA's mandate, and these Deputy Ministers would in turn be placed in the hierarchy above the senior fellows but ultimately below the Minister. In April, the debate on a split was restarted in the Assembly. What was unusual here was the way in which individuals from the MoRA leadership participated in the debate. Rather than present themselves as individual legislators debating the issue, for the most part the individuals comprising MoRA leadership presented themselves as a singular entity within the Assembly, with Minister Jay making statements and submitting a draft in the name of that group. This approach and its surrounding rhetoric were met with disdain by many, because MoRA as an institution is ultimately subordinate to the Assembly. I was one of those that voiced their disdain openly in my role as Legislator. I also had reservations about the precedent this could set in the relationship between the Assembly and the ministries that are, ultimately, given their mandate to operate by the Assembly alone. I decided not to act on these reservations, because I figured (or "hoped", based on contemporary private messages) that this was a temporary thing brought about due to the heat of the debate, and furthermore with my already public arguments against the MoRA leadership's position I would be reasonably accused of abusing my office for my own political goals in the Assembly. On the evening of May 9th, I received information from a whistleblower regarding some of the internal happenings within MoRA. Summary of the Whistleblower's allegations
Immediate actions taken The allegations made by the whistleblower were incredibly concerning to me. There was no doubt in my mind that I had to act, and do so with all deliberate speed. However, I knew that I had to tread a careful line. I knew that if the whistleblower’s allegations were at least broadly true, I would be likely met with quite active resistance to my involvement. I also knew that due to my public support for a split, my involvement could likely be perceived as an abuse of office. Finally, I did not have a second independent source for the information I received, so I could not be sure of the truthfulness of the allegations. I confirmed using the Discord API that there was a channel called #senior-fellows that I did not have access to. I decided that the best course of action would be to request access to the hidden channel and evaluate its contents for myself before taking any other steps. After ensuring both the Minister and I were online at the same time, I asked via private message for access to the channel, noting that my request is as part of my duties as Prime Minister and shouldn’t be construed as an indictment of his work or policies. That request was denied, with the stated reason that the deputy ministers would be uncomfortable with it. I then posted a Cabinet vote motion that I had prepared in advance, and had that motion passed quickly using my Charter VI.3 powers and the vote of a second Minister. The Minister noted to me that he understood my intentions and was supportive of opening up the channel to me, but that he would like to notify his deputies first anyway. Shortly after, I was notified that the ministry would seek judicial review before fulfilling my (from my perspective legally binding) request. At this point, I unfortunately had to assume that at least the broad principles of the Whistleblower’s allegations are likely to be correct. That didn’t solve any problems, however. I also observed LoAs filed in short succession by several members of MoRA leadership at this time. While still talking to the Minister via private messages, I began drafting a legal argument that could be used either as an Amicus Brief for a legal question submitted by MoRA leadership or for a legal question filed by myself. About an hour later, the Minister informed me that I had now gotten access afterall. I spent the next several hours analyzing the channel’s contents as well as talking to individual members of MoRA leadership, asking questions about context and their view on the issues at hand. I submitted a report of my findings to the Cabinet Situation Room (at 6:41am) before going to bed. The next day, I reached out in #senior-fellows, explaining my viewpoint and my findings. I preemptively addressed several concerns about my actions that had already been transmitted to me in private. I assured the members of that channel that I would not voyeurize its contents, nor would I lift anything directly from it (with one exception unrelated to this matter). My only order was that I mandated that the merits of assembly proceedings (including the split) are no longer to be discussed in inner MoRA channels, unless it is specifically for the purposes of planning the specific implementation of a law that is relevant to the ministry (the reasons of that order will become clear in the next section, but the general principle of it is because these things are the business of individual Legislators and not MoRA as a unit). With that, I opened the floor in that channel for comments and questions about my actions, and discussions about how to best move forward. Summary of Findings This summary is adapted from the aforementioned report to the Cabinet Situation Room, adapted to avoid names and augmented by further information I have learned since. All the information presented here was either directly observed by me, or verified with independent testimony of at least two individuals involved. What I can absolutely glean from the logs is that #senior-fellows was, in many parts, an echo chamber for certain sentiments regarding the current debate in the Assembly about splitting MoRA. The echo chamber discouraged participating in the Assembly debate. It also had at several points raised the thought that the assembly should not get involved in the ministry's business. Variations of the phrase "this is OUR ministry" and "don't listen to outsiders" have occurred several times, without objections. It had also been said that it was a good thing that Cabinet no longer had access to the channel. Next to #senior-fellows, there also exists a separate group chat, created by a long-time member of the ministry and containing the same participants but without Jay and without a particular member of the Advisory Council. I don't have access to that one, but I've been given multiple independent accounts of that channel. It was allegedly created in response to Jay being mostly concerned with Pacific-Con and less with the day-to-day of the ministry, and retroactively had the assent of Jay. It was initially only used for coordination, but later turned into a vent channel regarding the pending MoRA split. In conversations with some of the more open fellows involved, I've also learned that there has been a desire for a flatter leadership structure, and in fact the current structure (Minister, Deputy Ministers, Advisory Council, Senior Fellows, Fellows) has already been effectively worked around and "subverted" with a flatter approach that uses twice-weekly meetings and the combined leadership working together in a more holistic fashion (though without much involvement of the non-leadership fellows). Ironically, while that "workaround" was already happening, the echo chamber was complaining about various points made by split advocates with variations of "didn't they see that we put a structure into place", referring to the very structure that was being worked around. Regarding the whistleblower’s allegation about deliberately forcing an Assembly vote, I have since learned that this was a spontaneous idea cooked up in a Voice Chat to simply motion it to vote and see what happens. There was no concerted effort by the group as a whole, and in how it has been portrayed to me, it does not look to me like there was any malintent. Regarding the whistleblower’s allegation about MoRA leadership propping up their own candidate, I have since learned that an individual in MoRA leadership announced that they would likely seek the office of Prime Minister, and much of the membership supported that run in part because they were frustrated at the conduct of the likely Prime Minister candidate in question within the Assembly. There was no concerted effort by the group as a whole or any malintent here either. All the other whistleblower allegations appear to be accurate, with the caveat that I did not see these things to have been done or happened in bad faith, as I had initially perceived them. Interpretation of the findings This was an unhealthy environment, particularly for newer members that were part of that group, with its successes being despite itself rather than as a result of it. The reasons for my assessment have nothing to do with the political matter of the split, a matter which we as Cabinet shall not and will not judge as part of our Cabinet duties, even if we all hold individual opinions. The reasons are as follows: First, the echo chamber actively discourages participating in another core regional component, and specifically the one component that is the centerpiece of our open democracy. That is disheartening, particularly when done in the presence of newer players, and frankly does not belong in the auspices of something that is, at the end of the day, a part of the Cabinet whose mandates include the very integration efforts necessary to sustain our democracy. The irony is that their internal discussions contained quite a few very legitimate points about this split discussion that hadn’t been heard and could have helped their cause in the context of a healthy Assembly debate. Second, the thought that the Aassembly should not get involved in the Ministry's business is on its very face a wrong interpretation of the constitutional roles of these two institutions. The Assembly can regulate the MoRA within an inch of its life if it so chooses; the reverse cannot be said to be true. Such thought sets a dangerous precedent for the interplay between the Assembly and Cabinet. Finally, this closed-off space contained several newer members who by their own admission didn’t know better and thought that all of this (including the separate leadership group chat made without the supervision of the minister) is normal. It is absolutely not normal, and newer members shouldn’t be acclimatized to such precedents. With all of this being said, however, I must note the following: I do not believe that, at any point, any of the participants acted in deliberate bad faith. Prevention I cannot claim to have the perfect recipe for preventing such things from happening in the future, and would sincerely appreciate advice from the Assembly on what I can do in terms of written Cabinet policy in these last few weeks of the term. I do have some ideas, however, and I’ll share my thought process on how I came up with these ideas. First, we need to identify the root cause of this. Within those channels, there were several reasonable criticisms about the process and conduct; while that surely was a factor, that doesn’t go deep enough because I can imagine several scenarios, both hypothetical and historical, where similar processes were used where this sort of “us vs them” didn’t form.. I also don’t think it suffices to point to the ongoing split debate as a whole; that’s still too narrow and too specific, because it can be reasonably be inferred that such things could have happened in other situations as well, for example if there was a debate about abolishing MoRA entirely, or a recall debate of a certain member within MoRA, or even just the same issue but transplanted to another ministry (for example, suppose there were an open debate about splitting SPSF into an updater force and a piler force). Going more broadly, we arrive at the formation of an echo chamber in the first place, which seems to me to be much more a root cause. In fact, I’m reminded of some of the worst times of #mofa-hq back in late 2017/early 2018, because while it had different sorts of problems entirely (and a wholly different set of personalities), it too was essentially a kind of echo chamber keeping away from the rest of Cabinet. I’m quite familiar with it, as I was a part of it and the breakdown of it was ultimately a major factor in the Timscade incident. Second, can this happen again? I think yes, because if we assume the above root cause assessment to be accurate, this is now the second time that this has happened, even if the underlying issues and personalities were so vastly different each time. So that means it is absolutely something to be addressed. Third, what are the possible strategies to work against it? In a response to a question in my February 2018 campaign for Prime Minister (my third term), I addressed a particular situation (details irrelevant here) that resulted from the #mofa-hq echo chamber and mentioned that an improved Sunshine Act with heightened documentation requirements would help prevent such things. I then submitted a draft on a rewrite of the Sunshine Act to the Assembly. However, that draft was weakened before it went to vote, and furthermore remained vague on the individual ministries. Future Cabinet ministers (myself included) didn’t bother observing these documentation requirements outside of the full Cabinet as a whole (not always without reason). What also didn’t help was that at the time I was still in that echo chamber — it continued to exist in that form until I submitted the Motion of No Confidence in late May of 2018. It’s not unreasonable to say that my view on the subject was much more skewed than it is now, 2 years later. There is one positive thing that came from that incident that has relevance to this issue today: we opened up ministry planning channels to the entire Cabinet by default. That was always informal, though; we never had an internal Cabinet policy to force this. Furthermore, in this particular instance, we didn’t even notice that we didn’t have that access because Cabinet remained in the #advisory-council channel throughout and was only excluded from #senior-fellows at or near the beginning of Jay’s term. A nuanced ban on debating the merits of Assembly discussions within the Cabinet, such as the one I issued to #senior-fellows a few days ago, would also help, not necessarily with the prevention of an echo chamber, but at least with mitigation of certain topics getting heated in a place where they don’t belong and thereby reinforcing that echo chamber. It would also mean that future Prime Ministers wouldn’t be so hesitant to act on this matter as I was before the whistleblower complaint (and in hindsight, I probably should have just taken the hit and acted sooner). Putting it together, I think a good strategy for moving forward here would be to draft Cabinet policy that opens up all planning channels by default for Cabinet as a whole, bans or at least discourages the use of Group Chats in some nuanced fashion for official ministry business, and formalizes the order I gave to #senior-fellows regarding discussions about Assembly policy. If there are no major objections, I will implement that policy in the coming days. Furthermore, the Assembly may want to consider starting an earnest discussion about the Sunshine Act, specifically about the role of individual ministries and how their internal planning should or should not be “significant” and therefore be subject to documentation requirements. Going forward Jay has decided to resign from his Minister post, effective the 18th. On that date, the Cabinet will announce the replacement. For the rest of the term, the Ministry will continue to operate with the leaner, flatter structure that was already being put into place in the past month. This will be implemented by the incoming Minister in cooperation with myself. In all of this, the focus will be on keeping the Ministry running as it should, without any regard to what may happen within the Assembly. Ultimately, my goal is to ensure regular Cabinet business continues as it should, and that the next Prime Minister will not have this issue on their plate no matter how the Assembly decides to move forward on the split. I thank you all for your patience with this wall of text, and I encourage you to ask me all the questions that you have. I will answer them all earnestly and as quickly as I can. -- Roavin, Prime Minister ![[Image: XXPV74Y.png?1]](https://i.imgur.com/XXPV74Y.png?1)
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The following 9 users Like Roavin's post:• Amerion, Belschaft, Emperor Palpatine, Nakari, Omega, phoenixofthesun14, Seraph, Somyrion, USoVietnam
i quite agree in this but i doubt some of this and some of this is right nor wrong but i wont judge since i am not a pro in this and this is taking some time lets wait until this clears i hope
best regards, satbox space legislator
Roavin — thanks for putting this together. I think this is useful to understanding the situation.
I'm not quite sure how I feel about the proposed remedies, but also think this probably isn't the place to debate them. However, here's one thing I'd like to point out here: Everyone should feel comfortable coming to and speaking in the Assembly. Everyone. And, I get that this probably seems rich coming from the guy that made the debate openly hostile. But, it's important that everyone feel important and validated individually and not just part of a group (whatever that group might be). As Roavin pointed out, ideas expressed individually would be be information/important for the debate, but didn't get heard if they were kept behind closed doors. And, I'd add, to the current debate having multiple members involved in RA raise the same issues would have been more impactful and powerful than doing it as a collective, since making it under one heading obscures the individual numbers and personalities involved.
-tsunamy
[forum admin]
The following 7 users Like Tsunamy's post:• Belschaft, Daytime to Night, Imperial Frost Federation, Omega, Roavin, Seraph, Somyrion
Wow.
I am disappointed in all of you.
Deputy Regional Minister of the Planning and Development Agency(March 8-May 19, 2014)
Local Council Member(April 24-August 11) Court Justice of TSP(August 15-December 7)
Thank you, Roavin, for taking the not inconsiderable efforts to investigate and put this report together. It is illuminating and will no doubt serve as a useful reference point for future generations interested in what has been one of the more contentious periods in recent memory.
On the report itself, I think that errors were made but as you have underscored in several instances, these were not intentional nor done so with any malice. If anything, it has been a learning moment and hopefully, we can all conduct ourselves better — and I say that as a proponent of the split who has also erred in some instances.
(05-16-2020, 11:26 AM)Ryccia Wrote: Wow. I don't think that's the right take-away from the report (it's certainly not the [i]intended[i] one). Again, I can't stress this enough: At no point was there any indication that any of the things happened due to bad faith or deliberate negligence or any of that, but rather this was a situation that evolved over time, fed by understandably strong feelings about a particular subject. Both you and I have been guilty of reacting to things too viscerally in the past, and what happened here is a similar kind of thing. (05-16-2020, 12:54 PM)Amerion Wrote: On the report itself, I think that errors were made but as you have underscored in several instances, these were not intentional nor done so with any malice. If anything, it has been a learning moment and hopefully, we can all conduct ourselves better — and I say that as a proponent of the split who has also erred in some instances. Yes, I hope so too! Just from my own perspective, browsing through the channel and seeing some of the arguments made there for the first time really made me think about my own conduct in this affair, not to mention that it certainly affected my thoughts (from my perspective as a simple Legislator, not as Prime Minister) about the merits of a split as well.
Many, many thanks to Roavin for the work he clearly put into making sure every part of the process that led to this report was carried out fairly. I can't say there's anyone else I'd rather have handling something like this.
I think it is important to note, as we move forward, that a lack of bad faith does not mean a lack of issues. It means there is an extra burden placed on outside viewers to understand the perspectives and processes which brought those involved to the problematic situation in which they ended up, because those processes were sincere and backed up by reasoning. But it doesn't mean no accountability. Largely, I'm relieved. But in reading this report, the one thing which disheartens me more than all else is that it wasn't junior players forming an echo chamber and senior players calling them out on it. Senior members of MoRA's leadership, who have of course seen TSP as it dealt with problems like this before (e.g. the MoFA HQ drama, or the many secret-group-chat issues we've had), should've used that experience to... know better. We trust our community's elders, the bedrock of our region, to remember the problems of the past and make wise cautions to players who don't have those same memories. In fact, that's why we have an Advisory Council in the MoRA -- to retain that institutional memory. Instead, though, it seems that senior players were just as involved in the problematic echo chamber within MoRA, and in the process they acclimatized newer members to an unacceptable state of affairs. I know it's certainly unreasonable to expect anyone to be free from visceral, emotionally-influenced decision-making at all times, especially in the midst of a heated debate -- but if anyone can try to approach that standard, it should be our learned, experienced, senior players (reading this report, my mind does jump to Roavin's conduct here as an example). I also appreciate that no one was acting in bad faith -- but members were acting in poor judgement. We need good judgement from our older players. We need to trust that our newer players can live in a TSP where their mentors model informed, open judgement if we are to have a hope of perpetuating an informed and open system. I am deeply saddened that this situation is how some of our active, enthusiastic citizens were introduced to Ministry leadership. ![[Image: AfI6yZX.png]](https://i.imgur.com/AfI6yZX.png){kind=small} ~ Aumeltopia ~
(05-16-2020, 11:26 AM)Ryccia Wrote: Wow. This... is not the right attitude to take to this report, to the point where I made a huge rant post on the other private thread to do with the MoRA (here) about realising that: a. Everyone related to this is at some fault (including the assembly and me), and b. Going around trying to blame people and give out punishments and being hostile at them is a mistake, and we should instead be realising that everyone makes mistakes, everyone gets angry sometimes, everyone takes it personally sometimes and no one deliberately tried to cause an argument, which means we should find ways of avoiding this in the future ![[Image: st,small,507x507-pad,600x600,f8f8f8.u5.jpg]](https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.703640759.6162/st,small,507x507-pad,600x600,f8f8f8.u5.jpg)
I don't think Ryccia means anything terrible about it, he's just generally disappointed with how this has played out, as we all are.
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