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anjo · 08-21-2021, 11:45 AM

Hey everyone, it is I, the guy who does stuff in the bureaucratic background and almost never appears in public ‒ but with this campaign and, if you vote me into this office, serving as Chair, I intend to change that particular bit Blush

For those of you who don't know me (which, to be fair, may be quite a few, as mentioned above...), hi, I'm anjo! I joined TSP in last year's January and have been mainly involved in the Office of WA Legislation since then, where I've written many of our voting recommendations, programmed the OWL Bot to help in our daily proceedings, and am now serving my two-and-a-half-th term as Director. Aside from involvement in the Dispatch project of the Ministry of Engagement, I've also been serving as Hya's Deputy Chair for almost three full terms and now have the honor of overseeing the Assembly during this transitional election period.

So, why am I running for Chair? I like work that is more on the administrative side of things and I especially enjoy working with things like the Legislator Spreadsheet ‒ in the past 10 months, I've learned a lot about the Chair's duties, and I believe I'd do a good job fulfilling them! I'm a pretty organized person and can act timely and reliably when there's something that needs to be done (provided that I don't have school finals or am on vacation, which admittedly had caused some issues with OWL recently, but there's a 0% chance I'll have to deal with those causes again in the next months Upside_down

), and as OWL Senior Staff member, I'm especially experienced in opening and closing votes on time. During my tenure as Deputy Chair and also thanks to my involvement in the Commission on Laws that Hya set up a while ago, I've come to know our legislative procedures relatively well, and while I might not know everything by heart in this regard, I can safely say that I know where to look up the legal details should they evade me.

But I've put my campaign under the motto "Answering Issues of Chairing", so I'll finally get to that now: The final terms of our last two Chairs of the Assembly ended in motions for recall due to inactivity, and I've read that Chairs resigning or otherwise disappearing from the stage has been a historically known problem of the office, with the issue likely being the bureaucratic workload consuming too much time. I want to tackle this problem by developing some nice tools that will help future Chairs complete their duties in more efficient manners, reducing the overall time they have to invest into the job and thus hopefully avoiding burning them out with all the administrative overhead. Examples of this would include auto-formatting help (like the OWL Autoformatter Somy made for OWL recommendations) for States of the Assembly and forum posts/Dispatches related to votes ‒ which, by the way, could also feature cool graphs of vote composition etc. without any need for the Chair to be able to know how to make them with e.g. Excel/Google Sheets ‒ as well as a tool to make filling in the Legislator Spreadsheet with the individual votes of every single legislator much less time-consuming. But I don't want to bore you with technical details, so I'll leave it at that for now ‒ you can post a question here in the thread or just DM me on Discord if you're interested in that kind of stuff Tounge

That's about the additions to the office of Chair that I intend to make if you elect me, but of course I'd also continue the work of our past Chairs! First and foremost, I'd like to more frequently involve Deputy Chairs in the everyday business of the Chair in order to prepare them for the job if they'd like to run in the future ‒ Hya did a great job at this at the start of her last term, although it sadly died down a bit over her absence. In the same spirit, I'd try and take on the "guide to chairing" that was planned. The gameside Assembly updates that Moon was in charge of during his tenure as Deputy is also something I'd like to revive (likely again delegated to a Deputy).

Now, as that was quite a bit to read, here's a TL;DR of what my plans would be for the term if you elect me as Chair:

Helper tools for future Chairs to reduce the amount of time consumed by the job
Prepare future Chairs by involving Deputies in everyday procedures more and creating a chairing guide
Increase Assembly gameside presence with weekly RMB updates about Assembly activity
The small quality-of-life things for legislators like Discord and Dispatch pings
And naturally the essential Chair duties such as checking all drafts for legality problems or formatting errors (Hya's done such an awesome job unifying the looks of our laws, and I'd like to keep it that way!), timely opening and closing of votes, keeping the MATT-DUCK Law Archive consistent with passed bills, and publishing States of the Assembly and conducting the associated legislator checks on time

... and I think that's all! I hope my wall of text made some sense, please ask away if you have any questions for me!

Conflicts of Interest

I am currently serving as Acting Chair of the Assembly, Director of the Office of WA Legislation, MoFA Ambassador, and MoE staff member in the South Pacific. I am not involved in any other regions besides my service as Ambassador to the Free Nations Region and being the Founder of my puppet storage region.

I have access to the following nations: Tepertopia, Socialist Tepertopia, Free Tepertopia, and The Class Council (primarily for Issues); Office of WA Legislation (OWL staff duties); all nations in United Protectorate of Tepertopia (puppet storage for nations I once created as factbook props).

Quebecshire · 08-21-2021, 02:19 PM

Would you be willing to go as far as to brief deputies immediately upon taking office on what they are absolutely allowed to do under your Chair-ship? Naturally there may be some ambiguous cases, but informing deputies as best you can of their purview would greatly improve things, in my opinion.

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anjo · 08-22-2021, 05:52 AM

(08-21-2021, 02:19 PM)Quebecshire Wrote: Would you be willing to go as far as to brief deputies immediately upon taking office on what they are absolutely allowed to do under your Chair-ship? Naturally there may be some ambiguous cases, but informing deputies as best you can of their purview would greatly improve things, in my opinion.

Thank you for the question! When appointing my deputies, I would definitely talk with them as soon as possible so we can work out the extent of the delegated powers together. I believe a list of what they're allowed to do should then also be made available to the public, according to the Charter (emphasis mine):

The Charter, Article IV Wrote:(3) The Chair may appoint a deputy or deputies, to whom the Chair may publicly delegate any powers, responsibilities, or special projects of the Chair, subject to all regulations and restrictions imposed upon the Chair by law. The Chair may dismiss such deputies.

This way there would be less room for confusion, both for the Deputy Chairs and other legislators.

Langburn · 08-22-2021, 09:36 PM

What are some ways that you as Chair can increase government accountability of ministers in the Assembly?

The Commonwealth of Langburn

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**Jay Coop** · 08-23-2021, 02:17 AM

If elected, how do you plan to balance your responsibilities as chair and OWL director?

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anjo · 08-23-2021, 10:30 AM

Thank you for the questions!

(08-22-2021, 09:36 PM)Langburn Wrote: What are some ways that you as Chair can increase government accountability of ministers in the Assembly?

To be honest, I think the most I in the function as Chair could do in that regard is putting things like possible recall motions to vote in a timely manner and ensuring that the atmosphere in the Assembly remains friendly and open to legislators discussing what the Cabinet has been up to ‒ personally starting such discussion or otherwise politically confronting another body in my role as Chair and not as fellow legislator wouldn't be something I'd consider part of the duties of the office. Also, I believe the Cabinet's been doing a phenomenal job in making itself more accountable to the Assembly (or all citizens for that matter) by continuing the monthly progress reports and subsequent Q&As on Discord ‒ I really can't think of something more direct and interactive compared to that right now Tounge

(08-23-2021, 02:17 AM)Jay Coop Wrote: If elected, how do you plan to balance your responsibilities as chair and OWL director?

I'm currently just sitting at home doing basically nothing until university is starting, so I'm having plenty of time on my hands for the near future to settle in and get used to the combined duties if I am elected. As OWL director and senior staff member, I'm mainly concerned with opening/closing votes and publishing prepared recommendation dispatches (of course I also write them here and there, but we have a far larger pool of staff who are doing this in relation to the other tasks, so naturally I end up doing that part less frequently), and these tasks only need to be done when there's an actual new proposal submitted/at vote in the WA, which is very much manageable, especially with other senior staff members by my side. We have Assembly votes way less often and in much more foreseeable ways than a new resolution reaches the WA voting floor, and States of the Assembly are only published once in a month; the most frequently exercised task of the Chair would be approving LoAs I reckon, and that is hardly any effort. All in all, I'm pretty confident I'll be able to keep up with Chair duties while also not neglecting OWL.
However, if a situation were to suddenly come up where I couldn't take on either one or both office's tasks, I'd nonetheless at least keep OWL senior staff/my Deputy Chairs (who, with my plans to involve them more in everyday happenings, should be prepared and know about the office's duties) informed on what needs to be done and would try to remain in close contact, even if I couldn't personally do things.

Langburn · 08-23-2021, 09:03 PM

Thank you anjo for your answers, you have my full support!

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