Hello everyone! With the creation of the new Ministry of Engagement that is solely dedicated to “integration”. I am running this campaign with the big responsibility of defining the shape and culture of the ministry itself along with implementing all major changes to our region’s integration infrastructure and policies that I have been advocating in public since 2018. With my experience handling big projects like the Southern World Assembly Initiative, the dispatch project, and the Office of WA Legislation (OWL). I believe I am your best pick to handle this new and important office. This campaign post will be divided into four parts: What integration is and what is the MoE is supposed to do with it; Integration and recruitment policies; Organizational policies; and, Conclusion

What integration is and what is the MoE is supposed to do with it   Integration has been a buzzword commonly thrown around to talk about making new members become helpful to our region or recruiting new members. From this definition it is easy to assume MoE should handle all of our region’s recruitment and integration effort. I think integration is a grand collaborative endeavor every institution and every government official in our region should do, each ministry or governmental body should handle the recruitment and integration of their own institution. However. it is necessary to have a “hub” that directs new members to these institutions. New members need to be aware of what our region has so they can choose and join them. MoE’s first and foremost mission is to help new members get direction in our region. MoE shall serve as GPS or tour guide, it presents what activities we have, explain them, and give links for further participation (which leads to a ministry’s own recruitment page for example). The second mission of MoE is providing infrastructure, the general dispatches that welcome new members, graphics design and presentation standards that all other governmental bodies use, and automated telegram recruitment access (should we have one) need to come from one place for ease of management and consistency. I will not define an immediate success of MoE as being able to increase the level of activity and new members in our region, that is the long term goal. The short term and judgeable goal is making sure dispatches are beautiful and up-to-date, themes and graphics standards are consistent across the region, and everyone can know what the Cabinet does without having to read the Charter.

INTEGRATION AND RECRUITMENT POLICIES   An expansive, consistent, up-to-date, easy-to-understand dispatch system Dispatches are the most important tool of passive integration and recruitment. They essentially tell everyone what the region is about, guide newcomers on how to understand and participate in the community, and are the face of the Coalition government to gamesiders (and forumsiders who don’t like to read laws to understand them themselves). Therefore, it is important to have an up-to-date, easy-to-understand system of dispatches. The dispatch project which will be continued under my term will accomplish this objective. It will have a master dispatch that provides links to common resources like offsite properties, news services, guides, as well as links to other activities and institutions in the region and a narrative-style dispatch that falls in line with how our current welcome dispatch looks like. The key feature of this system however is that it will have a very large collection of dispatches that cover how our government works, from high-level description of each branch to in-depth explanations on each institution’s powers and interactions with other institutions and a set of detailed but still understandable guides covering how to participate in the Assembly, elections, and other procedure-heavy institutions. Another big thing is a factbook that covers our region’s history, culture, activities in details like a typical nation factbook roleplayers tend to write. A software will be used to ease the workload of writing BBCode tags, ensure consistency in design with the Dispatch Design Guideline, and ease of updating information by allowing editing names of government officials and various numbers via Google sheets. A web tool will be provided in the future to edit the content of the dispatches. For near-term through, this will be done via Google sheets like in TNP. This project will not touch other ministries’ dispatches for now unless they require. No matter the technology and setup, the major issue of out-of-date information can only be fixed by having a plan with humans involved to maintain it. I intend to set up a small group in MoE dedicated to this purpose in which members will have constant access to the dispatch editing system. A list of information to check will be made and members of this group will use it to check and edit this information every month. This group will also be the principal authority for the content of the main dispatches. Overall this has the highest chance of happening since most of it has been done and I have a concrete plan already. I can confidently promise we will have the best regional dispatches in NationStates in terms of information coverage and design, no exaggeration! The main difficulty to expect is the factbook’s history section as it demands active research and information digging. The obvious solution is gathering people who are knowledgeable about the subject and ask them a lot then let the writers condense these information. More targeted telegrams and pings The journey of a new player tends to start off as issue answerer, then by reading regional dispatches, telegrams, or hearing stuff on the RMB, they will join other activities in the region. In my opinion, recruitment telegrams are the most effective if they are sent out at a certain amount of time after the initial onslaught of recruitment telegrams a new player receives. As such I plan for telegrams related to further participation in the region (WA, Assembly,…) to be sent to new nations that have been active at answering issues lately. This will cover both new nations founded in our region and those migrate from other places. Of course, this doesn’t mean the welcome telegram which is sent automatically upon founding or joining our region should be abolished. The key point here is to repeat the same message in a new context to further persuade the new player to join us. This telegram program will be carried out via both an automated API telegram system and manual telegrams. MoE will recruit volunteers to do this task manually alongside the automatic way. A list of target nations will be made everyday for these volunteers to send telegrams to and it can be used by other ministries for their own needs. The reward? Cards! (More below). Dispatch ping will be used in the same way. I want to ping new nations (all of them since dispatch pings aren’t rate-limited) on main welcome dispatch to let them know of various activities in our region in case they don’t read our telegrams. Push forward the renovation to a true Polynesian theme As many of you have known there is a project which used to be led by MoRA to come up with a new theme that is more in-line with Polynesian culture, as we are sitting in an uncomfortable mid-way between that and generic tropical resort. Under my term, this project will be pushed forward under the leadership of the graphics design team. The Ministry will accommodate their requests as reasonably as it can be on enforcing this new theme across our region’s public-facing infrastructure. Cares will be taken to avoid disrespect of Maori culture as it is still well-alive today. Practicality in naming will be a major consideration as I believe functions should prevail over forms. Surveys and polls will be used extensively to avoid potential mishaps and controversies. Otherwise, the graphics team will have full autonomy in carrying out this project. Get TSP into cards and use cards as rewards This is probably the most ambitious and controversial policy in my campaign. There is indeed a community that plays the card game in our region. The main reason you don’t really see them on our off-site platform though is that we don’t provide them with any mean to help them trade or talk to each other or properly guide new card traders into the game, most of them stick to the gameside only. It is imperative that the government accommodates the needs of all players in our region. I believe the argument “there is no community, why should we care” some of our members are holding is rather short-sighted and even harmful in the long term. With over 8000 nations, there is no guarantee that there is no one who cares about cards. If we keep ignoring these players we are risking seeing them migrate to other places with a card program (TNP, 10KI, TEP) and lose potential future contributors and leaders for our region. I want to establish a card program that takes inspiration from both TNP Card Guild and TEP’s TEAPOT model. It will have two major components: the platform, and the reward part. The platform part includes a Discord channel and subforum to allow card traders to conduct trade domestically and help each other. Currently most talks on card trading in TSP takes place on interregional servers or privately via telegrams which pose a range of inconveniences. Having a place in TSP specifically for TSP traders will eliminate these problems and increase participation in our own community. An extensive set of guides on basic trading and running large farms, both our own guides and guides from other card communities, will be maintained to introduce new traders into the game and further advance the skill level of already experienced traders who want to get larger. Experienced traders will be recruited (from our own region and foreign places like the interregional card server) to mentor new traders. On its own, the card game isn’t really related to integration or engagement, it is just a subset of the game just like R/D or the WA. But I intend to not only provide a platform that accommodates card players but use cards to further promote participation in regional activities as well (the reward part of the program). A big government-operated farm will be set up to collect cards that can be gifted to players who take part in our activities, from SPSF operations, OWL opinions, to culture events. Each ministry will decide on how they should use cards if they want to, under advice and help from MoE. Again, volunteers will be recruited and trained (on scripts and workflow) to run this farm and will receive card rewards (or other rewards in the future) for doing so. The good news is that thanks to scripts, one person can handle up to 100 puppets without fatigue if they are trained correctly. To further accelerate the process, aside from farming, active trading with other card players and organizations outside our region (collect and sell cards they need and buy what we need) will help us get more desired cards and more banks. After we get enough resources and connections, we can start to organize pull events and work with other regions/card organizations on interregional card events to further promote our program and the card game itself abroad and in our region. Since establishing a card program is a massive although necessary undertaking that requires a sizable recruitment campaign of gamesiders and experienced traders alongside extensive initial planning, I will be honest and only promise some parts such as the platform part to be fully implemented. A farm that provides cards for rewards needs a few months to build a large enough deck to make sure we don’t run out of cards to give. Actively working with the Local Council The Local Council is a massively under-utilized institution for integration in our region. LC members have a big strength of being close and charismatic to gamesiders. This means they should be used more to promote regional activities to gamesiders, especially the RMB community. I will work with them closely, discuss, and provide them detailed plans on what and how to promote further involvement in our region. Examples include what dispatches they should send to newcomers on the RMB, what fancy new activities and events they should tell RMBers,... Of course, this does not mean I am “leading” the LC or serving as the Cabinet’s representative to it in any way as that is illegal. LC will have full autonomy on whether to accept what MoE proposes.

ORGANIZATIONAL POLICIES   Work groups Internally, I will pursue something similar to MoRA’s flat structure and set up permanent work groups that are dedicated to maintain each part of the permanent infrastructure (such as dispatches, telegrams, cards) as well as temporary ones that construct new projects. Each will have their own coordinator or none depends on the requirement. Work groups will be the only internal division MoE has and all groups will be opened to each other for joining and cooperating. The work culture should be as open, efficient, as lightweight as possible to make sure everyone is fun while working on projects! Autonomy for the graphics design team Since graphic designing requires RL specialty, it is best to give the graphics team full autonomy on how they work, organize, and train future members and serve their requests as much as possible. This philosophy should also apply in other unofficial RL skills-required groups such as those who work in software development. Actively approach newbies and cultivate future leaders Players who apply for the ministry will be personally approached in DM to better find out their specialty and needs as well as help them know more about MoE and find the way for future involvement and success. I will pay attention to new and lesser experienced staff members and allow/offer them chances to lead projects or get any more senior-level jobs. Giving permission only is not enough, I believe an active approach is needed to get people to truly commit to furthering their career in MoE as people tend to be shy and don’t meet senior staff members to request a higher position from my own experience. Data-driven policy-making Periodic surveys and polls will be used to collect what people, especially gamesiders, actually want and feel to help MoE decide on its policies as well as monitor and improve performance of existing programs and activities. Since MoE will deal with the mass, taking everyone’s opinions and reviews as frequently and accurately as possible is of extreme importance. In the further future, automatic methods of collecting data will be employed to increase efficiency. Transparency, openness, and constant updates I will provide constant updates about the progress of various projects and activities within MoE weekly (or even more frequent) as it is the right of citizens to know how their government body is doing. I will also try to make as many parts of MoE open to the public as possible, from Discord channels to plans, timelines, data, and resources (Including graphics files and source code). The subforum for MoE will be organized in a way that makes this information easy to find.

CONCLUSION   This campaign may feel too ambitious and has a high risk of making people burnt out, however, I have come to a realization that people give up when they feel lost or fail to catch up with the schedule. I assure with proper planning and guidance for staff members, we won’t need a lot of people to accomplish it. Various policies and projects should and will be built in a way that can squeeze out as much productivity as we can without giving fatigue to staff members. The key here is to make the leader the hardest working guy (not very hard if they can manage their own schedule like an organizational person™) since they have to manage and distribute the workload to lower-level staff members. Lower-level staff members only need to do things they are specialized in. The infrastructure nature of integration makes it require extensive planning and preparation at the beginning, but the long-term benefits are very much worth it. Future MoE leaders will have a great base to build their policies and projects upon if we can finish the business of this challenging and first-ever term of this ministry. Big thanks to Amerion for formatting this post. Please give me all ze questions below!

CONFLICT OF INTERESTS   I am currently serving as commander in the SPSF, deputy minister of integration of the soon-to-be-abolished MoRA, and advisor and senior staff in OWL. I do not and have not participated in any other region or organization outside of TSP at this moment aside from being a resident in the North Pacific. Main nation: United States of Vietnam Puppet nations: Equestralizer (TNP), Kogame (Europeia). R/D and card puppets in Artificial Solar System

Chief Supervising Armchair

(This post was last modified: 10-06-2020, 08:45 AM by USoVietnam.)

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My god. It's beautiful.

You were predestined for this job and I'm very happy to see you go for it. Your campaign is ambitious (maybe too ambitious for one term), but achieving even just a fraction of what you laid out here would make this first term a huge success in my mind.

You have my endorsement.

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One question: What do you think about a unified application process? i.e. there's just one form to fill out for any position, with checkmarks for each individual area.

(This post was last modified: 10-05-2020, 06:04 AM by Roavin.)

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My god. It's beautiful.

You were predestined for this job and I'm very happy to see you go for it. Your campaign is ambitious (maybe too ambitious for one term), but achieving even just a fraction of what you laid out here would make this first term a huge success in my mind.

You have my endorsement.

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One question: What do you think about a unified application process? i.e. there's just one form to fill out for any position, with checkmarks for each individual area.

In my opinion, one form with checkmarks then each ministry will get in touch with applicants for further information specific to that ministry. 

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On the ambitious thing, the dispatch project and telegram system has the highest chance of being done. Follow by the theme renovation depends on the graphics team and finally the card program. The card program has many components so I only promise the planning and the platform part to be done during my term.

Chief Supervising Armchair

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Bravo on such a well written campaign. But may I ask, what do you plan on doing with the Wiki? Will you continue it and plaster it everywhere, or discard it?

Local Councillor (3/15/20 - 6/23/20)
Deputy Minister of Educational Affairs (2/19/20 - 4/9/20)
Senior Fellow of Integration (12/20/20 - 2/19/20)
Fellow (1/12/19 - ~10/14/20) 
Ambassador to Osiris and TWP (4/3/20 - 7/8/20)
Legislator (1/19/19 - 11/1/21)
Chair of the Assembly (6/23/20 - 9/3/20)
Secretary of State (7/8/20 - 2/4/21 | 6/14/21 - 11/1/21) 
Deputy of Media (2/14/21 - 11/1/21)
Ambassador to TNP and Lazarus  (6/14/21 - 10/22/21)
MoE Leadership (10/14/20 - 11/1/21)

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Bravo on such a well written campaign. But may I ask, what do you plan on doing with the Wiki? Will you continue it and plaster it everywhere, or discard it?

Oh yeah I forgot to mention this, but it will be continued as long as there are people willing to run it. The dispatch project will contain links to it.

Chief Supervising Armchair

(This post was last modified: 10-05-2020, 09:35 AM by USoVietnam.)

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This is brilliant. Nothing more to it. Full and absolute support.

Midwesterner. Political nerd. Chipotle enthusiast. 
Minister of Culture of the South Pacific // Former Prime Minister

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Bravo on such a well written campaign. But may I ask, what do you plan on doing with the Wiki? Will you continue it and plaster it everywhere, or discard it?

Oh yeah I forgot to mention this, but it will be continued as long as there are people willing to run it. The dispatch project will contain links to it.

Do you plan on teaching new people to work on the Wiki, since the only thing stopping people from working on it is the absence of knowing how to code in Wikitext?

Local Councillor (3/15/20 - 6/23/20)
Deputy Minister of Educational Affairs (2/19/20 - 4/9/20)
Senior Fellow of Integration (12/20/20 - 2/19/20)
Fellow (1/12/19 - ~10/14/20) 
Ambassador to Osiris and TWP (4/3/20 - 7/8/20)
Legislator (1/19/19 - 11/1/21)
Chair of the Assembly (6/23/20 - 9/3/20)
Secretary of State (7/8/20 - 2/4/21 | 6/14/21 - 11/1/21) 
Deputy of Media (2/14/21 - 11/1/21)
Ambassador to TNP and Lazarus  (6/14/21 - 10/22/21)
MoE Leadership (10/14/20 - 11/1/21)

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Bravo on such a well written campaign. But may I ask, what do you plan on doing with the Wiki? Will you continue it and plaster it everywhere, or discard it?

Oh yeah I forgot to mention this, but it will be continued as long as there are people willing to run it. The dispatch project will contain links to it.

Do you plan on teaching new people to work on the Wiki, since the only thing stopping people from working on it is the absence of knowing how to code in Wikitext?

Of course. I will try to fit that into the schedule. Any help is appreciated as it is not my specialty.

Chief Supervising Armchair

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It is beautiful to witness a dream beginning to be realised.

Founder of the Church of the South Pacific [Forum Thread] [Discord], a safe place to discuss spirituality for people of all faiths and none (currently looking for those interested in prayer and/or "home" groups);
And The Silicon Pens [Discord], a writer's group for the South Pacific and beyond!

Yahweo usenneo ir varleo, ihraneo jurlaweo hraseu seu, ir jiweveo arladi.

Salma 145:8

translate

The LORD is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love.
Psalm 145: 8

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It may be beating a dead horse but it goes without saying: damn. This is really going to be something incredible.

Above all else, I hope to be a decent person.
Has Been
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CoA: August 2016-January 2017
Minister of Foreign Affairs: October 2019-June 2020, October 2020- February 2021

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