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February 2021 Cabinet Election #1 - Minister of Engagement Interview

SPINN

Year 18 | 07 February 2021

FEBRUARY 2021 CABINET ELECTION
MINISTER OF ENGAGEMENT INTERVIEW
Moderator: James D. Halpert | Participant: Vietnam

Welcome to the February 2021 Minister of Engagement Interview!

I am James Halpert and I will be the moderator of this interview with Vietnam, candidate for Minister of Engagement. This interview is sponsored by the South Pacific Independent News Network.

The format of this interview will consist of a single section:

The only section will feature questions on the candidate’s qualifications, intended policies and their vision for the coming term.

The candidate is asked to clearly mark the end of their answers so that I may know when to move on to the next question and to answer no later than 3 minutes after a question has been asked.


Opening Statement

[Vietnam] Thank you for conducting this interview! It is a great honor to be here.

You said in the interview for your previous campaign that the immediate success of the Ministry of Engagement would be marked by "having a well-designed system of dispatches, smarter strategy of sending recruitment telegrams, and consistency on presentation standards". Do you believe that immediate success has been achieved?

[Vietnam] Since none of these projects are out in the public yet except for the new graphics, I will go with no. I do admit promising that as an "immediate one-term" success is too much since we are doing what takes other regions years to do in a few months, especially if you put quality above all else (I won't put an half-done work in public in any way, part of why you keep hearing delay). We have made significant progress on these projects however, progress that hasn't been seen elsewhere in our region in my memory. Some of the projects such as dispatch project and card project are very near to being rolled out right now so next term won't be an over-promise here.

You say in your campaign that you have finished preparing the office space; that is, ensuring that any future minister can take the reins without difficulties. Have you also done work to ensure that staff can easily get involved in the ministry without feeling overwhelmed?

[Vietnam] Yes, part of finishing the office space is to make sure people, especially newbies, know what they are doing and will do. When a new member arrives, I personally approach them and give them links to the appropriate resources that we made in the "setting up the office" period aside from just explaining the overview of it. These resources provide a clear and easy-to-understand knowledge required to participate without being overwhelmed, especially when a project has months of work behind it.

One of the less discussed aspects of your campaign is the recruitment telegram project. What exactly does it involve, and what benefits would it bring to the region?

[Vietnam] In a nut shell, it is a system that has more specific targets than what our normal new resident welcome telegram has. When someone joins a region, they may indicate certain activities that prove they are ready to get involved more in the region. The telegram project I propose will target these nations with content more tailored to what they may want. We will detect these nations based on a variety of criterias such as residency, last login, WA and issue happenings,... The telegrams will be sent via both automated and manual means. Determining the statistics and activities of these nations is arguably the most difficult part of the program as we have to work around the constraints of the game's API. The biggest benefit it will bring is that new residents who may care about further involvement will get approached. There are two types of newbie, those who skip our region or the game from day one, and those who indicate an interest and want to participate further. This project will aim at the latter since they have a much higher chance of getting integrated into our community.

What role do you see for the Ministry of Engagement in terms of keeping residents who have already expressed interest involved in the region vis-à-vis other ministries and government institutions, whether in terms of parallel activities or even cooperation?

[Vietnam] MoE pretty much is designed to target at those who want further involvement but don't know where to start. If you are a noob and you want to get involved further, in a big GCR as ours, you simply don't know where to start, we have the Assembly with dozens of laws and political mechanisms behind it, we have a bunch of government ministries and departments that offer all kinds of activities, we have a bunch of places to roleplay. These can easily overwhelm a beginner. MoE's job is to provide initial guidance, helping them aware of what they can take part in and provide direction for further participation into what they choose. Beyond that, it is each ministry's job to integrate new members into themselves. MoE provides assistance to these ministries in term of means for dispatch maintenance and such, but I don't think we can go much further without playing with the laws. So tl;dr MoE is like the K-12 education system that just shows everyone where to start and provide basic knowledge, each ministry will do the job of colleges, train newbies and provide them opportunities for whatever they are interested in.

Having served nearly a full term as the inaugural Minister of Engagement, what lessons have your learned in terms of what the ministry needs for continued success and what the region needs from the ministry?

[Vietnam] In my opinion, what MoE, or pretty much any other government body needs for success is firstly a clear vision, that is, you know exactly what the results should be, secondly, a realistic plan to execute it, a realistic plan here is a plan that fits your ability as a leader and respects commonly established knowledge in its field, finally, the willingness to train a competent generation of new members for its future. The latter point cannot be stressed enough here, if you don't have a future generation to take over, all of your works are just for fun rather than being serious.

On the latter question, I think the region needs communication and accountability from the ministry. MoE will pretty much be responsible for what newcomers see about our region, especially its government. Its quality of work should always be upheld and its policies should always be communicated as explicitly clear to the community as possible.

Good that you should mention accountability. The outgoing Cabinet received a fair amount of criticism for a lack of accountability and transparency. How do you think the Ministry of Engagement has fared in those two areas, and what will you go if elected to ensure that the public knows your agenda for the term and whether you are meeting it?

[Vietnam] I think MoE has fared very satisfactorily in transparency. You can know the minute-details of what is going on in the ministry without even reading the logs. The trello boards which show the status of our projects down to the level of checklists and drafts are immediately updated when something is done or planned and the plan documents of projects communicate in details what we will do in the future. The thing I am proud the most here is that we keep everything up-to-date, since if we didn't keep them up-to-date, we wouldn't been able to do the work as everything require extensive knowledge of what have happened and will happen. This is a great reliable-by-design architecture in my mind.

I will definitely continue this in my next term and encourage any future leader to continue it.

For those reading this interview who might not be familiar with this, what are the Trello boards and where can they find them?

[Vietnam] Trello is a tool for project management. It has something called a "board" where you can put on checklists, cards, links, and other resources for other people, both in your team and the public to know. You can find them for all projects Linkhere or on the forum thread of each project.

Recently there was a debate about the regional symbols, the result being a law that codified the flag that has been in use for nearly two decades. Could you expand on what takeaways you got from that event and how you plan to approach graphics design moving forward?

[Vietnam] I think having our culture symbols set in stone will stop potential conflicts and concretely enforce the mandate that they have to be democratically changed via a vote. The graphic design team will still get the autonomy they have operationally and creatively. Any significant change will have to go through a public poll in some way if the Assembly didn't do it first and we will be receptive to any feedback as normal.

Desserts are a contentious issue in the region. Do you prefer cake or pie?

[Vietnam] Of course I prefer pie since most of our region's tech infrastructure that MoE presides over may eventually be run on something with the "pie" in its pronunciation :stuck_out_tongue:

Closing Statement

[Vietnam] A vote a day keeps the dictators away. Vote!

The South Pacific Independent News Network (SPINN) is an independent news organisation established in 2003 with the goal of providing good, insightful and timely commentary on regional events for the citizens of the South Pacific. Opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board. Content is published via pseudonyms. The SPINN is not associated with the Government of the South Pacific.

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