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Hi PigInZen, thank you for taking the time to be here today.


Glad to do it.


Can you describe your current role in the Gaius Julius Administration?


I am the current Chief of Staff to the President. It's a position I held for Emerick at the start of his second term and continued in when Gaius was reelected following Emerick's resignation. The Chief of Staff is basically a coordinator, a gofer and an organizer all in one. I make sure the Cabinet is fully staffed and that people are doing their jobs.


So its safe to say you have a very active role in maintaining and running the country. Does it ever bother you that the roles you fill, while very useful and important, tend not to make you a household topic of conversation among the citizens of the eUS?


No it doesn't bother me at all. I'm not doing this for personal fame or glory. Rather, I get a distinct sense of satisfaction when things just work. I've spent a great deal of time over the past four months focusing on government operations and not necessarily policy. Policy appears to most to be the sexier assignment but I've found that operations, once done properly have a profound effect on policy. My goal has been to provide the USA with the most efficient, effect institutions that are well documented so future administrations can implement them easily. I've found that glory hogs and publicity hounds generally make poor decision makers. I'll let my activity, judgement and effectiveness speak for itself.


Do you have any big projects, other the the election campaign, that you are working on right now?


Big Projects.

(PiZ let this sink in for a moment)

There are several projects I'm currently enmeshed in. They all involve my activities and duties as Chief of Staff and my penchant for organization. The first is a proposed reorganization of the eusforum. That's now in the hands of forum moderators and admins but I'm expecting it to pick up speed as the admins find time. The second is a project I am currently in the middle of in conjunction with KillingTime to revamp and reorganize the IRC channels. We're moving to an official IRC channel structure, starting with #eus and #eus-congress. Eventually all official channels will follow this format (#eus-[subname]) and will have a more restricted logical policy for ops and hops. The third is establishing three new offices in the government: the Office of Human Resources, an Advertising Office and the Office of Technology. The Office of Human Resources is already up and running and is staffed by Director Jude Connors and his assistant rainysunday. The Advertising Office is a smaller office but will be responsible for coordinating all paid adverts bought/placed by the government. The Office of Technology is slowly getting going and is a large part of Jewitt's platform. Essentially this Office will be responsible for oversight of all technological assets the USA currently has at its disposal: the forums at eusforum.com, the wiki/website at eusinfo.org and the IRC channels on rizon.net.

The Office of Technology will also be responsible for the administration and development of and USA database that will mirror data from the eRepublik API. The API data is free of charge and accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. Thus, our database will be made available to any USA citizen who wants to use it. Knowledge of MySQL and a means to display that data (usually php) would be needed. The Office will also coordinate development of web applications, reports and data mining for government operations. (more) There are also smaller side projects that are currently underway through the Chief of Staff office. The Deputy Chief of Staff, Chocolate McSkittles, is a a very diligent and capable public servant. He and I determined that it would be worthwhile to document every government organization, every IRC channel, job duties and reporting structure for the Executive, among other organization projects. It's a thankless job but one that needs to happen.


Why do you feel that re-organising the way the eUS uses technology is so important?


In real life my background is in IT but I hold a Master's in Information Science. For those not aware, Information Sciences not your traditional IT department functions but actually stems from Library Sciences. It's the study and analysis of information and data flows, human-computer interfaces, classification, database normalization and other more esoteric aspects of information and technology. I've found the eusforum structure to actually IMPEDE the exchange of information and serve as a roadblock to getting things done efficiently. That's just a small part of my obsession. The ability for us to tap into near real-time data from the eRepublik API will give us the opportunity to automate so many processes that are currently done by hand.

I am a platoon Commanding Officer in the US Mobile Infantry and there is an Executive Officer that must daily check each platoon member's profile and note changes in strength, total fights and damage, rank, skill, location, etc. It's an incredibly intensive process that higher leader in the USMI and JCS rely upon for battle calculations and feasibility studies. Not only this, but we'll have the ability to identify new citizens by location rapidly and assign them to outreach coordinators with the Welcoming Committee. If we can get USA citizens to submit an external email address we might be able to develop a secure, rapid means of communications outside of the traditional forums/in game PM methods. This could be handy for so many reasons, one of which could be getting citizens to time their fights in key battles. Jewitt's ranking up proposal which will distribute weapons to citizens close to achieving the next military rank relies upon this database. The database will give us the opportunity to identify citizens within specific total damage ranges and provide weapons distributors a list of these citizens. The sky's the limit. To recap, technology and mastering information will be the difference maker for the USA as compared to its rival countries in eRep. Fine tuning our processes NOW while we are no longer under occupation is essential for becoming the most powerful country in the game. Coupled with the 10,000 Fists initiative the USA could rapidly eclipse the power not just of Hungary but of multiple rivals COMBINED.


In regards to your earlier answer about the Big Projects you are planning, do you believe that these projects would receive the same level of support from a Frost/Woxan administration as they would from a Jewitt/PigInZen administration?


To be honest, I'm not sure. I mean, Josh Frost's platform says nothing about government organization or technology. I cannot answer that question for them I can only give you my opinion. I suspect that they wouldn't but it could entirely be dependent upon who they bring into the Cabinet. The best move for citizens that truly believe that these sorts of projects are important is to vote for Jewitt on the 5th as he will place an emphasis on them.


How do you feel about the intimation made, made by the Frost campaign in a recent interview, that you've "gone negative"?


I think it's silly and points out that Jewitt has a real kick-ass and in-depth platform. My comments that have been pointed out have ONLY addressed Josh Frost's platform and have not been personal in nature. I don't understand how talking about one's political opponent's platform and being critical of parts of it is "going negative." Josh himself even accused me of this in an interview with rainysunday of the SFP. I just don't get it unless, of course, they've realized that in comparison their platform IS LACKING and doesn't offer much new.


Now before we started this interview you mentioned that you would like to take this chance to announce a new addition to your platform. Would you care to explain it to me?


I would love to. Jewitt and I were discussing some economic matters the other night and I was lamenting a recent discussion in Congress about potentially raising the VAT on housing. We both had an epiphany - the VAT was raised when we were occupied for the express purpose of capturing some tax revenue from occupiers purchasing weapons, food, moving tickets and gifts. We are no longer occupied and those the VAT on these products should drop to the minimum 1%. Besides, the amount of revenue that we obtain from the VATs is negligent. Thus Jewitt and I will propose to Congress an immediate drop in the VAT to 1% for food, gifts, weapons and moving tickets. Doing so will reduce the price of these goods allowing for greater affordability and hopefully, create demand and reduce inventories. Overproduction and high inventories are an issue and this is one way of combating that. For those that are not aware the VAT on food is currently 12%; gifts, weapons and moving tickets are at 8%.


Becoming VP is nothing special for you, would you do anything to celebrate winning?


I would celebrate by getting Jewitt and the future Chief of Staff to get their cabinet in order on the first day. *grin* No, seriously, I probably wouldn't do anything special other than publish a thank you to those voters that supported Jewitt. The sense of gratification of being on a winning ticket wouldn't last that long for there is always work to be done in the Executive branch.

Thank PigInZen!

You can find Jewitt's plaftorm here.

You can find an article PigInZen wrote introducing himself here.