Govt Clarifications to DPI-EC doubts about eCDP

Day 1,483, 06:46 • Published in India India • by Suvajit

As one of the oldest member of the eCDP/Retention Team along with Hemanathankumar, I think I am quite eligilble to clarify the doubts raised by DPI-EC on the program and hence this article.

Things you need to know: The eCDP/Retention Program was started about 3 months back. It was started on the insistence of King Hannibal of Asia and had been sponsored by subsequent Governments. The main objective of the Program is to help and educate new players joining the game by supplying them with food and weapons, the two most important items required by a newbie to grow in the game. Another objective is to educate the players and retain them in the game during the initial days when we lose maximum number of newbies to boredom and confusion and make the player an active and responsible citizen. The Program is sponsored by the Government and is supervised by the MOIA as the main sponsor but it is managed and run independently.

The Program has undergone a lot of structural changes from the time it started when I used to head it, in an effort to make it more efficient and plausible and also to rectify some of the practical problems we faced in the course of time. But even then as I have always mentioned in my articles about the Retention Program we always welcome new ideas and new players in the team. The program has had its share of prominent members, with a couple of CPs like Prabal and Hemanathankumar being its distinguished members.

Now to clarify some of the doubts raised by DPI-EC:
1) DPI-EC : Storage is an issue to the food dispatcher because, currently there is only one dispatch officer and he has to store all the govt food stock! So, if the responsibility can be shared, (ie., more food dispatch officers can be appointed) it should not be a problem and also another alternative is they can just be allocated funds from the budget instead of food; Oh, wait...we don't have a budget!

Plan (a) - Govt buys food and gives food to dispatch officers, weekly or so, depending upon the quantity of food to be dispatched?
Plan (b) - Govt allocates funds to the food dispatch officers, monthly - They can buy food (whatever quality, just go for the cheapest!) from the market and distribute to the newbies.

Clarification: Let me do a simple mathematics here for understanding:
The program dispatches 300wellness to each newbie every day and on an average the number of newbies supplied is 15 or more. So in a week, the program on average supplies:
300X15X7=31500 wellness
Taking into consideration that only Q5 food is being dispatched, the number of food to be stocked is:
31500/10= 3150.
If we take 4-5 dispatch officers, the amount of food to be stocked by each officer is:
3150/4= 788 or 3150/5=630 Q5 food
The Program started with a team of 4 Dipatch Officers but the problems that we face😛

(i) Other than old and elite players few have enough storage capacity to hold that quantity of food. This is magnified by multiples when we consider lower grades of food.

(ii) Also we have seen in the past that all the dispatch officers are not able to dispatch supply with same efficiency. In some cases we had only one dispatch officer supplying the food whereas the others have not been able to do so due various RL and ingame responsibilities. In such cases the one officer who is regularly supplying, finishes off his stock real fast and then we have to wait for other officers to supply or take back the stock from them and redistribute it to the efficient officer. This is a very practical problem and we have seen it happening time and again and hence we shifted to the present system of one senior player with enough storage capacity capable of supplying all the newbies.

(iii) Another problem that we faced when we tried to employ newer players in the dispatch team is that since the food stocked is Q5 they tend to use it up for their personal consumptions as most new players produce Q1 or Q2 food themselves and by in game dynamics the Q5s will be first used for consumption. The production capacity of the newer players is also not enough to substantiate the Q5 food they consume from the stock and hence leads to mismatch.

(iv) I will clarify about the idea of giving money to the dispatch officers to buy food themselves in the next point.
We would like to have some feasible solutions to this problem and we welcome new ideas that can be implemented on this. As such without it, we will continue with the existing system. I would like to mention over here, that there will be some technical problems when there is handover from one dispatch officer to another and hence we may observe some days when supplies may be discontinued but on average the supplies had been distributed to most players on most days.

2)DPI-EC -Govt : He sells the cheapest Q5 food, so we buy all the food for eCDP from him.

DPI-EC : We don't have any problem as of whom/where you buy from, but dispatch should be made fairly regular. Also, I believe it would be very much meaningful to see tenders being invited for the same(assuming, you are going for plan (a) above!) - tenders for govt buying q5 food from citizens in a large scale. We can have multiple food sellers/sources and hence, more alternatives(in case one of them fails!) Also, please note that when I say tenders, I meant articles in the eIndian media and not forum posts, obviously because not many are active in the forums and besides, this is no top secret BS!

Clarification: As I have mentioned earlier, the program is run independently and is sponsored by the Government. As such, the process that we follow is , we take prices from different players and decide on the lowest price offered and the final validation and negotiation is done by the Government who pays the supplier. So actually the concept of tenders is already in place though it’s not implemented via an article but is done through IRC.

As Hemanathankumar rightly pointed out, contrary to the what claimed by DPI-EC the program takes supply from more than one supplier for example Navincharles and Vishnu Kandeepan.

Now I will also explain the problem of supplying money to Dispatch Officers here. As I have mentioned above since the program is sponsored by Government and the final price and negotiation is done by the Government, this process of supplying money to multiple officers and multiple point of validation is not feasible. Also this may lead to multiple prices all of which may not be the best offered price and may lead to the breakdown of the system.

I like to point out here a very practical problem which is faced by the team members. There are few players like Hemanathankumar, Commius who have consistently stayed and contributed to the team and the program from its inception (I have to admit that even I have drifted from my active duties in the program in the recent times). In fact these two guys have performed the herculean and commendable job of running the program alone in the last couple of months along with Maverick as the lone supplier. So the idea of articles as Tender, though seems very attractive to us, but may not be feasible taking into consideration the workload to output of the process.

I think Troj4n20 has also joined the team and it will be great if he can take over this responsibility and fructify the idea of articles about the program and tenders.

3)DPI-EC -Govt : Prices might fluctuate drastically, sometimes...so, it is necessary to cling on to a reliable q5 food seller!

DPI-EC : Prices don't fluctuate for no apparent reason. During a stable run of an economic cycle, if govt dispatch officers start buying from the eIndia market, demand for cheap food increases and gradually supply too will increase and the prices will drive themselves down(slowly but surely!). So, when you(govt) know we(eIndia) are going to get wiped out(usually, govt gets to know before the citizens do), gather all the q5 food stocks as much as you can for the cheapest possible prices and keep them aside for eCDP newbies.

Clarifications: The solution to the problem is not so simple. Food prices or in fact any Article prices do not come down through sustained procurement from the market. The only way to bring down food or any article prices is through lowering of raw material prices.
As for the idea of a reliable supplier , it has been witnessed that only 2-3 players offer the best prices to us and hence we stick to them as the process is smooth and efficient.

4)DPI-EC -Govt : Where can we find food dispatch officers ?

DPI-EC : Finding dispatch officers should not be an issue as far as I know, if team MOIA gets to work! Ideally, the MOIA should closely follow the free food dispatch thread in forums and guide the newbies who all register on forums for free food. If a newbie has gone that far(ie., register on forums for free food!), just assume that he is here to stay and under all circumstances he should be retained!

Clarifications: We are strictly against the idea of offering salary to Dispatch officers. This is because the eCDP/Retention Program is a philanthropic program and not aimed to increase the earnings of the dispatch officers. Also just giving salary doesn’t guarantee that a dispatch officer is going to work efficiently and on a long term basis. The basic requirement for any player who wants to join the team is feeling of voluntary service and nationalism.

Also MOIA officers cannot act as dispatch officers as ideally the MOIA officers change every 30 days with change of government and hence training and educating a fresh batch of Dispatch Officers every 30 days will be a big problem.

As I have already mentioned, this program is run independently and is only sponsored by the Government. This is because, one of the basic foundation on which this program was started was that this program and hence its members will not try to influence or control the decision making of any of the newbies that is in the program. As such it was vital that we maintain our distance and independence from any kind of political alliance.

5)DPI-EC-Also speaking of MOIA, we have seen no updates from them so far...which leads us to 3 possible explanations.

there is nothing to update at the moment (or there is no work to do?) - All izzz welll!!!

they are too lazy(to retain new guys?) - go garfield! \m/

"they have too much work to do(Shakti = hoc + moia) ?" - I understand he's more than eligible candidate for both the positions separately, but is he capable of doing justice to both ? HOC need not publish article updates every week(as most of the work that needs to be done is in forums) but MOIA, I believe needs to publish updates(weekly, if possible?)

Yet again, speaking of updates, we have not seen any updates from any of the cabinet ministers(you dead?) so far(or may be they are publishing invisible articles!) Only, Commius(Minister Of Finance - MOF) did , that too after someone prompted him for that in the public grievance cell(if you did not already know about PGC, please click here!!) and many of my questions are still unanswered!

Clarification- Updates are to be provided when there are actual events in the nation.
The duties and workings of MOIA and HOC are largely similar and hence Shakti is the best suited person for these two posts.
Updates will be provided to intimate all eIndians by respective cabinet members. Like Commius who has already published his article about his department, similar articles will be published by all ministries. If you see, the MOD has already started the practice of Daily Battle Orders which was discontinued under past governments.

I hope this provides some clarifications on the doubts raised by DPI-EC. Just to finish off, the Retention Program/eCDP is quite a complex process and we always welcome new ideas to make the system better as it is a process which will adopt itself to the changing needs of the game and the country. We also welcome new members to come and join and actively participate in the program , though not for any salary please. 🙂

JAI HIND
Suvajit
Vice President of eIndia