Colony Bureau

Officially the 'Bureau of Colonization' but literally no one calls it that.

History

Ravinger Shelby is credited as the creator of the Colony Bureau, though he didn't head the formal organization that was later established. The Shelby Range of the Mediger Scale is also named for him.

Organization

How many people are in this bureau? What are their jobs? Who does the Colony Bureau report to?

• Planetary Evaluation - This department works with various mapping and scouting agencies, as well as Fleet and Alliance authorities, to evaluate newly discovered planets for suitability for colonies.
• New Charter Assignment - This division processes petitions for colony worlds and matches them with available planets. It also oversees the initial colonization efforts and, assuming they succeed, turns the world over to Charter Management for longer-term oversight.
• Charter Management - This division assigns client colonies to managers who keep an eye on its status until it is eligible for established world status.
• Evaluation and Forfeiture - This division handles colony status evaluations and, if they fail, the forfeiture of assets and the return of that world to the new assignment roles.
• Exit Team - This division evaluates colonies identified by Charter Management as candidates for independence and, if those worlds pass muster, launches them as full-fledged member worlds of the Alliance.
• Starbase Division - This team works with Fleet to assign charters for starbase spheres. Once they've assigned the sphere, however, management and oversight is jointly administrated with Fleet, which (in practice) does most of the work.

Additionally, the Bureau has strictly administrative departments:

• Records - This division maintains records of prior colonies (both successes and failures).
• Accounting and Payroll - as expected
• Public Relations and Education - this department handles public appearances and creates and distributes educational materials about colonization processes.

Tasks

Colonies and Starbases: Fleet owns and manages all starbases, which makes their construction plans identical. Fleet also manages the physical integrity and defenses of each starbase. But the city-spheres are contracted to the Colony Bureau, and are separately managed by the groups of people who choose to settle them.

Procedures

Scouting

How is the Bureau informed of new worlds available for colonization?

• Goldilocks worlds
• Terraformed worlds

Scouting bonuses were paid by the Colony Bureau when a discovered world was successfully colonized, a metric they defined as the planet having been settled long enough to leave the indenture period. Since such bonuses arrived decades after the worlds were discovered—if at all—they were widely held to be mythical.

Assignment

How do groups apply for and receive permission to claim a world? (Is there a lottery? About how many groups request the right to colonize? What's the waiting list like? What are the criteria used for evaluating an application?)

• Planets are not named until they're awarded to an alien power (at which point the alien's name is registered), or to a settling group, at which point they can register a name with the Bureau (inevitably granted, unless it's something egregious). Until that point, the world is referred to by its starchart designation. (Usually Sector-Solar System Number-Planet Number.)

Charter Award

Once the charter's awarded, the colony enters its initial period, set aside for them to travel to the colony and put down on it. How long do they have? What's the typical process?

Most colony vessels are designed to be disassembled into useful pieces for the nascent colony, rather than left intact.

Stages/Statuses

All colonies proceed through a timeline intended to take them from new colony to independent member world. That timeline is separated into stages.

Stages

• Application - the colony group has requested a colony through the application process
• Charter Grant - the colony has been granted a charter to settle a world
• Staging - the colony group is sending resources to the world to facilitate initial settlement; at this stage, the people on the planet are transients, with primary residence elsewhere
• Settlement - describes the first year after the colony has put down its permanent residents and is in the process of building its first settlement
• Consolidation - the period during which settlers are taking actions that make their ability to stay on-world more likely to survive disasters or setbacks; this should lead to self-sufficiency
• Extension - wherein the colony is self-sufficient and diversifying to ensure that self-sufficiency (usually proved out within a generation)
• Petitioning - the colony is Extended and has applied for independent membership in the Alliance
• Independence - the colony has been visited by the Exit Team and fulfilled all requirements, and has been granted status as a member world

At the point of independence, the colony's file is closed and remanded to the Records division, and the colony manager is taken off their case file and assigned a new client.

Statuses

• Indentured (all export profit dedicated to paying off debt incurred by settlement). Most common method to colonize worlds under Alliance jurisdiction; average time spent Indentured is 25-30 years.
• Far Fruit (seriously, what is this)

Enforcement

If a colony is found to be breaking its charter, the Colony Bureau can render it null and call in all the debts at once; this usually means the end of the colony.

Who does the Bureau send if the charter's broken?