Councils and Civil Service
One government, delivered locally. Everyone calls them councils. They are staffed by civil servants and always have been.
Your council
The running of the Republic is national. There are no elected councils, no mayors and no local budgets (Article 75). Services are delivered locally by offices of the national civil service, each led by a Chief Commissioner, in every one of the six cities.
The reason is in the Clerk’s note to Article 75. The city the Founding Das came from ran its own budget, and that is exactly how it was killed: hold the money back, blame the council for the hole, then tell everyone it’s a local matter. Nothing here can be starved of money, because nothing here has money of its own to take away.
What your council does
Housing, bins, local roads, registration of births and deaths, identity cards, local planning and the front desk for almost every public service on the island.
The Pigeon Patrol
In Port Ringo, the council’s enforcement officers are known as the Pigeon Patrol. They issue fixed penalties for litter, fly-tipping and smoking outside food premises (Q100). Holders of diplomatic immunity are exempt, to the Patrol’s lasting irritation.
Same everywhere
Wherever you live on the island, you get the same schools, the same doctors, the same buses and the same chance at a decent life. Where somewhere needs more to get there, it gets more (Article 18).
Your identity card and yer NAN
The card
Every citizen gets a National Identity Card, free (Article 31). Since the Thirty-third Amendment it can live on your phone, and a card carried that way is the card. Nobody is made to have a phone, and nobody is treated worse for not having one.
Yer NAN
Everyone gets a NAN, the personal number conferred at birth or when you are first issued with an identity card, visa or passport. Everyone gets one. Nobody gets two. You need it to do anything at all: open a bank account, take a job, rent, see a doctor, enrol, claim or vote.
Your data
Everyone may see what the State holds on them, correct it, and have it deleted when it has served its purpose. No decision affecting your rights is ever made by a machine on its own (Article 40).
The Births Register
Every birth on the island is registered with your council. The Births Register is also what the Border Bizzies check every Is Right La claim against.
The civil service
Impartial
The civil service is permanent, impartial and appointed on merit. A civil servant’s duty is to the law and the Constitution before it is to any Minister, and saying no to an unlawful instruction isn’t a disciplinary matter (Article 65).
Whistleblowers
Anyone who blows the whistle on wrongdoing in the public interest is protected absolutely, and any agreement claiming to stop them is void.
Open by default
Ministers publish every meeting they hold, with whom and about what, within fifteen days (Article 63). Public records are released after ten years, not thirty, and destroying one is an offence without limit of time (Eighteenth Amendment).
Page last reviewed: 29 October 2029