7-085: Illuminator – Senior Staff Lounge

“Well, it works like this:  Like the rest of the Dominion the Vizierate is organised into Octants managed by an Under Vizier and has a Dominion-wide view led by the Grand Vizier.  Each kiloCycle the Grand Vizier, the Under Viziers and the Viziers Ordinary that support them meet together at the Vizierate Tower on Zargonia and develop the Vizerate’s forward plan for the coming kiloCycle.  That meeting is called the Burden and the forward plan is called the Decision of Help, and before you ask, I don’t know why.”

Mallory empties her drink and signals for a refill, including one for Oliver, irrespective of where he is up to with his.

“So, with the Decision of Help decided, the Under Viziers go back to their Octants and they and the Grand Vizier pass down the contents of the Decision to the Viziers Ordinary, who are responsible for allocating resources to meet the broad strategic objectives outlined in the Decision.  

“Like the other main institutions of the Dominion, the Vizierate receives an allocation of funds and resources through the Overlord’s Benevolence and the Grand Vizier gives allocations to the Under Viziers.  The Viziers Ordinary carve their respective allocations of resources and objectives up into Projects, each intended to meet some objective contained in the Decision.  So at that point the Viziers Ordinary have a big list of broad Projects defined and a pool of resources allocated to each one, and then they need people to carry those projects out.      

“If you are a Minor Vizier or a Vizant Grade 4 then you have access to the Vizier’s Marketplace on VizNet.  Every Vizier and Vizant 4 has an entry in the Marketplace where we list our skills and previous Projects held.  If we want, we can indicate that we are open to take on new Projects and add them to our portfolio of current work.

“So, a Vizier Ordinary with a bag of projects to get done goes to the Marketplace and either does a search for Minor Viziers with appropriate skills, or posts a notice and interested Minor Viziers can apply.

“Any project a Vizier Ordinary hands out to a Minor Vizier to be Vizier in Charge, or ViC,” Mallory pronounces it ‘Vich’, “is a Tier 1 Project.  Now, the sort of Projects a Vizier Ordinary hands out are usually pretty big, like ‘manage all Vizierate facilities in Octant 5’, or ‘co-ordinate Vizierate intelligence analysis of the Naki’, so the ViCs for those projects usually break them up into smaller projects and go to the Marketplace to find Viziers to run them.  These are Tier 2 projects, which may be further broken up to smaller Tier 3 projects, and so on.