[Declined] NT Corporate Structure Change

[Azande]

This doesn't really work with the Lore Application format, sorry!

Essentially, this is a proposed expansion/re-design of some of NanoTrasen's corporate structure, and gives (lorewise) Heads of Staff/Captains more of a role in the company.

The Chief Executive Officer and Board of Directors remain unchanged in any way. I just wanted to have a little more meat to NanoTrasen as it didn't make sense that essentially seven people alone ran a multi-trillion dollar corporation and 400 million people, which is fixed by the implementation of Deputy Chiefs, more involvement of Heads of Staff in the running of the company.

In game, the one thing I'd be excited to do is when someone complains to me about some strange design feature (like Medbay), I could go "Oh yeah, I'll refer that to the Architecture and Design committee for you" and then laugh because I know I definitely will not be.

Changes

Chiefs of Staff

Group of Seven

This team of seven highly distinguished individuals form the backbone of NanoTrasen's operations. Working out of NanoTrasen's headquarters, their portfolios involve spearheading the development of policy within their department, enacting the orders of the Chief Executive and Board of Directors, and above all - ensuring the profitability of NanoTrasen. The Chiefs of Staff are required to report to the Board of Directors quarterly, and work with Ms. Trasen daily. They are appointed directly by the CEO and approved with majority consensus of the board, who to this date have not denied a proposed appointee.

Employees including Station Command will go through their careers without ever seeing a Chief of Staff, and those that do most likely work in Tau Ceti or on an important facility (such as the NSS Aurora), however - they can sometimes be seen at corporate parties that Station Captains are invited to if they meet certain performance requirements.

While these people are the primary authority over their respective divisions of the company, they are supported by a group of Deputy Chiefs in every system that NanoTrasen has expansive operations, including Tau Ceti.

Direct Changes to the Chiefs of Staff

Chief Relations Director and Chief Personnel Director merge into Chief Operations Officer

Chief Legal Director is removed and becomes:

General Counsel (non-Chief role)

Chief Internal Affairs Director (Chief role)

General Counsel

The General Counsel Office within NanoTrasen is the company's legal department and is responsible for ensuring that the company is at all times in a legally defendable position, and in most cases in compliance with the law.

It is exceptionally large due to the sheer size of NanoTrasen and the legal ramifications of running a multi-trillion credit interstellar corporation. Underneath the General Counsel themselves are Senior Counsels for each distinct legal jurisdiction (Sol, Tau Ceti, Elyra, etc.), and a myriad of lawyers specializing in different fields of law to support their work.

The position of General Counsel is prestigious as they are essentially responsible for ensuring that the various governments of space don't eat NanoTrasen for dinner, but it is often not considered a Chief of Staff position because they are appointed by and report directly to the Board of Directors rather than the CEO, although they interact frequently with the corporate executive.

Deputy Chiefs of Staff

There is a group of seven Deputy Chiefs of Staff in each system in which NanoTrasen operates an NTCC facility, and their work is based out of those command hubs. Deputies are paid according to the profitability and perceived strategic importance of the sector they work within, which creates a large incentive to improve the company's operations and healthy competition between regions. The highest paid deputies are those overseeing the company's work in Tau Ceti due to the importance of the system, and it is often these individuals that are chosen from when a Chief of Staff position opens up at headquarters.

Whereas their senior counterparts require a vote to appoint, the Deputy Chiefs of Staff can be appointed without consultation of the board. They are generally appointed by a group of three people:

- The Chief Executive Officer

- The Chief Operations Officer

- The Chief of the portfolio in question

Deputy Chiefs of Staff specifically oversee the approval of Station Command applicants, respective to their fields, and most Heads of Staff would have met at least one or two Deputy Chiefs on various occasions. However, due to the large amount of command applicants - the best prospective candidates are selected by a committee of Heads of Staffs and submitted to the relevant deputy for review and approval.

Operations Committee

The Operations Committee is a non-executive body that serves two primary purposes within the company. First, it serves as an advisory body that consults with the Deputy Chiefs of Staff on prospective policies, acquisition, strategy and finance. Secondly, it serves as a forum for Station Command to directly interact with their superiors and recieve important briefings on issues affecting the corporation.

The Operations Committee rarely meets in a single, whole session and instead divided into a variety of sub-committees which are standardized across the galaxy. Some examples of the committees include:

Aquisitions Committee

Asset Protection Committee

Research, Development and Innovation Committee

Finance and Budget Committee

Health Insurance and Benefits Committee

Command Employment Committee

Each committee is chaired by the (most) relevant Deputy Chief of Staff, or in their absence the most senior and relevant Head of Staff available. During these meetings, members of the committee advise the Deputy Chiefs on things such as how easy or difficult it would be to implement a new policy or regulation, current employee morale, breakthroughs in research - etcetera. In the end, most committees have no genuine or immediate authority, but their support and advice is usually followed due to them being experts in their fields. Sometimes, emergency meetings may be called to brief a group of heads on an important issue - an example is the Asset Protection Committee being called into session following the announcement of the Syndicate-ALA alliance.

Certain committees are more influential than others, such as the Finance and Budget Committee and Command Employment Committee, the latter of which is responsible for reviewing Head of Staff applicants and providing the best candidates to the department Deputy Chief for final approval; and the former being the body responsible the granting of discretionary funds from a limited budget given to the committee to award. It is often that Captains will try to make cases early on for why their facility deserves some of this money before the committee's funds dry up for the fiscal year.

Heads of Staff are expected to be a member of at least one sub-committee, and may be a member of at most three, whereas Captains may apply to become members on as many as they want.

Central Command Internal Affairs

Led by their system's Deputy Chief Internal Affairs Director, the CCIA Bureau is responsible for maintaining the quality of NanoTrasen's employees by investigating complaints and incident reports, inspecting facilities, and enforcing regulations on a broad scope. During regular station operations, Central Command Internal Affairs is the only office available for station-to-central contact in order to ensure proper flow through the chain of communication, and have substantial authority to resolve situations on board facilities within the sector. When making statements, it is and must be assumed they have consulted and are speaking on behalf of the Deputy Chief when enforcing, defining or explaining policies in question.

In addition to these powers, they also have the authority to modify, suspend and terminate employment contracts following incident reports - when a Station Command member is being considered for serious punishment, the Deputy Chief responsible is consulted. (Lore wise only, no change to CCIA's actual staff powers)

Rank and pay wise, CCIA Bureau Agents occupy slots above the highest available pay grade to Captains, making around 900 credits a day at the start of their work.

Internal Affairs

Directly subordinate to the CCIA Bureau is Internal Affairs, every station has their own Internal Affairs Branch with a variety of agents assigned in rotation to it. These Internal Affairs Agents are the eyes and ears of the CCIA bureau and exist mostly outside the regular command structure. They are able to handle their own investigations on these facilities, and forward their findings to Station Command and Central Command to request action be taken. While the individuals have no immediate or direct authority, most Internal Affairs Agents are in training to succeed to the mantle of the CCIA Bureau and making an enemy of one is not advisable.

Station Command

Station Command, also known as 'Heads of Staff' are a group of six individuals in positions standardized across the company assigned to a specific station for generally several shifts in a row. They oversee the day-to-day operations of the company in the field, and have the authority to temporarily demote, suspend and reassign employees, and represent their departments on board.

As a whole, Station Command has a large amount of discretion over the operation of their facility and a multitude of light-policies (such as no-smoking rules), but a majority of their power is vested in the Station Captain, who is NanoTrasen's primary authority and the head of Station Command staff.

Aside from on-station duties, Heads of Staff can expect to be assigned files and cases to work on during off-time or office hours. A Head of Personnel may be given a pile of work accident claims forms to sort through and deny approve reasonable requests, or a Head of Security may be asked to consolidate a days worth of case files into something manageable for Legal.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

we already have duty officers which are are holdover from when that is what we called ccia. now they are a nebulous amorphous blob. ostensibly they are the executive branch of ccia i am keeping as a catch-all bin for where you would send all the sorts of 'corporate' shenanigans that don't exactly fall under CCIA but also do not exactly justify going all the way to the top. wanting a modification of the whole station is something important enough that you'd refer it to the ntcc do's and they'd kick it up to Nigel Brent for a stamp. aurora does not get major permanent modifications without Brent's orange stamp. They do not need to oversee literally all 400 million employees. Corporate usually does not know every single employee in every major retail store. they have store directors that they meet with. DO's/CCIA are our store directors and captains are our department managers.

the corporate branch as it is now is a more streamlined structure of what we have irl. It is not relevant to anyone to know of every deputy, board, and committee. we understand that our government has a president, senate, and supreme court, and that there is a hierarchy or trifecta there.We do not need to go into detail there to get the picture of a representative democracy. To me you are suggesting something like describing...

The (as of 2017) 88 subsidiary bodies of the US Senate: 16 standing committees with 67 subcommittees, and five non-standing committees,

The United States House of Representatives' 21 congressional committees: 20 standing committees and one select committee,

And the over 400(!) federal agencies that exist of which no one even in the government knows the exact number of.

if I had to learn about all of these committees and agencies in highschool i would have immediately dropped out on the spot and turned to a life of crime selling bootleg marvel comics. There is importance in knowing all this if you are specializing in such things but i do not think such infodumps are informative. you can memorize and recognize the chiefs of staff and the concept of do's and ccia. I already forgot how many committees the senate and representatives have by the time i got to typing this sentence.

That might be me because i do not like infodumps. Density without substance is offensive for me. What consequence is there to being able to cite the fact you sent a request to the Finance and Budget Committee?

[Azande]

we already have duty officers which are are holdover from when that is what we called ccia. now they are a nebulous amorphous blob. ostensibly they are the executive branch of ccia i am keeping as a catch-all bin for where you would send all the sorts of 'corporate' shenanigans that don't exactly fall under CCIA but also do not exactly justify going all the way to the top. wanting a modification of the whole station is something important enough that you'd refer it to the ntcc do's and they'd kick it up to Nigel Brent for a stamp. aurora does not get major permanent modifications without Brent's orange stamp. They do not need to oversee literally all 400 million employees. Corporate usually does not know every single employee in every major retail store. they have store directors that they meet with. DO's/CCIA are our store directors and captains are our department managers.

the corporate branch as it is now is a more streamlined structure of what we have irl. It is not relevant to anyone to know of every deputy, board, and committee. we understand that our government has a president, senate, and supreme court, and that there is a hierarchy or trifecta there.We do not need to go into detail there to get the picture of a representative democracy. To me you are suggesting something like describing...

The (as of 2017) 88 subsidiary bodies of the US Senate: 16 standing committees with 67 subcommittees, and five non-standing committees,

The United States House of Representatives' 21 congressional committees: 20 standing committees and one select committee,

And the over 400(!) federal agencies that exist of which no one even in the government knows the exact number of.

if I had to learn about all of these committees and agencies in highschool i would have immediately dropped out on the spot and turned to a life of crime selling bootleg marvel comics. There is importance in knowing all this if you are specializing in such things but i do not think such infodumps are informative. you can memorize and recognize the chiefs of staff and the concept of do's and ccia. I already forgot how many committees the senate and representatives have by the time i got to typing this sentence.

That might be me because i do not like infodumps. Density without substance is offensive for me. What consequence is there to being able to cite the fact you sent a request to the Finance and Budget Committee?

 

I want to see a greater and more clear outline of the company than 'eight mystical people somehow run 400 million employees with the help of like 12 people people' . There is no reasonable way CCIA and 'Duty Officers' (literally the result of you not knowing what name CCIA were going by anymore) would be able to handle the complete management of a sector. All of CCIA are MBAs or lawyers, and all of them basically only handle incident reports. Change CCIA or stop claiming they're these sectoral command gods that somehow do /everything./ to keep the company afloat.

IRL, corporate visits often from my own experience. Where I worked, the district manager visited often, the regional manager visited often, and at least once every few months a lot of high up managers came and walked through our location. My suggestion here is to get rid of the idea that CCIA are store directors, and change them to purely authoritative investigators and agents of 'Deputy Chiefs of Staff', which are essentially replacing 'Duty Officers' on your chart.

[Zundy]

Seems like unnecessary bloat. It's not just CCIA and Duty Officers that keep a sector running smoothly be the command staff as well. I like the idea of the potential player interaction and roleplay to be had under "Operations Committees". That's certainly something to look into.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Directors do not manage the 400 million employees. The line that shows who manages who goes from the directors to the CCIA/Duty Officers. It is the same reason Miranda Trasen does not oversee the employment records of every 400 million employees. The CD's manage macro corporate business that usually impact all the star systems NT is in unless there is something special going on somewhere. DO's and CCIA have a lot of autonomy in individual star systems.

Like Zundy said, this is a lot of bloat for little gain.

You did not respond to my extremely relevant remarks about the US government's bottomless pit of committees.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Official US Executive Branch Web Sites

This page contains Executive Branch sites only. With the time we have available, it is not possible to list every department agency. For more detail, see the United States Government Manual. For more government sites, see: Legislative, Judicial or Government Resources in general.

 

https://www.loc.gov/rr/news/fedgov.html

If you wrote a paragraph describing each of the 140 agencies listed here and their relation to the federal government, would you feel that this served a valuable use of your time? And, if this level of information necessary for the purpose we've lain out? Even the makers of this list admitted there is not enough time to catalogue and explain all the agencies and committees. The official US position is to throw their hands in the air and say "We did our best."

Once an organization gets large enough, its inner workings become bloated and byzantine. That doesn't mean it would be fun to read about it. We do not have to read a 139 paragraph description of the Wayland-Yutani corporation before we can enjoy watching Aliens.

Application declined.

[Coalf]

Denied, locking and archiving.