Argaea

The Technocracy of Argaea (commonly known as Argaea) is a small technocracy on an island in the south of the Audonian Ocean. The nation is lead by a team of engineers of which are lead by the Omega and Prime Engineer. Argaea is funded by Burgundie as a research expedition.

Due to the province's technological and engineering basis, it is the sole. The province is not lead by people who are elected but instead by those chosen by an algorithm that statistically tracks their technical ability to manage the nation and assigns, at will, the most appropriate leader. The head of these engineers is the Omega Engineer who is known only by Ryan. The second lead engineer is called the Prime Engineer, who is known as Dave.

Politics and government
Argaea is part of the Burgoignesc Overseas Territory Assembly's Polar Burgundies geographic designation. Burgoignesc Overseas Territory Assembly is a constituent country equivalent of Burgundie with its own assembly, prime minister, budget, and laws. Burgundie's national governmental influence is limited to subsidies, education, and security, however, its financial and cultural institutes cast a long shadow across Argaea.

Argaea is a province within Burgoignesc Overseas Territory Assembly with its own semi-elected -, representative legislative body, and court system.

Argaeans are Burgoigniacs/Burgoignix with complete civil and economic rights, and citizenship (political rights) under the same federal service criteria as all residents of Burgundie. Burgoignesc is the official language.

Provincial executive
The provincial executive is the -. Three candidates are elected by a election held every 5 years, the three candidates are presented to the Court of St. Alphador and the next - is chosen from these candidates. If the citizenry rejects the selection, a run-off election is held with the remaining two candidates.

Provincial legislature
Like the Citizens Court of the National Assembly (Burg. La Assemblee de Ciutadans de l'Assemblee Nacional, ACAN), The Argaean Citizen's Court of the Provincial Assembly is a unicameral legislator. It makes provincial law, has the power of the provincial purse, and has the power of impeachment, by which it can remove sitting members of the provincial government. The Assembly has three seats for each province, one for the Burgoignesc Overseas Territory Assembly's Argaea liaison, 3 for the clergy, 3 seats reserved for municipal leaders, and 3 for a rota of private business leaders. On 6 occasions throughout the year 3 more seats are opened to the public to debate topics that are not on the annual legislative agenda.

Military installations
The Australis Dog Sled Patrol is an elite unit of the Navy of Burgundie. It conducts, and enforces Burgoignesc sovereignty in the Australis wilderness of southern Argaea. Patrolling is usually done in pairs and using dog sleds with about a dozen dogs, sometimes for four months and often without additional human contact.

Geography
Argaea is a four island cluster above the Antarctic continent. In the winter it is common for these islands to be connected by pack ice.

Research Expeditions
In the year 2016, Argaea released it's first finished project in the form of an international time database. The project helped synchronize time across all the nations in a standardized format and help synchronize all calendars that use the Argaean format. The calendar format was announced to Burgundie as the first finished project, and is now accepted by many nations as an acceptable standardized time format.

As of 2021, Argaea is working on a central database to store information over all countries in a unified format. The project is still ongoing as of 2027 but is expected to be finished within the next decade.

Argaean Seed Bank
The Argaea Global Seed Vault is a secure seed bank on Argaea. The technocracy’s directorate started the vault to preserve a wide variety of plant seeds that are duplicate samples, or "spare" copies, of seeds held in gene banks worldwide. The seed vault is an attempt to ensure against the loss of seeds in other genebanks during large-scale regional or global crises. The seed vault is managed under terms spelled out in a tripartite agreement between the Government of Burgundie, the Argaean Technocracy, and League of Nations.

The Government of Burgundie entirely funded the vault's approximately $8.8 million construction. Storing seeds in the vault is free to end users, with Burgundie paying for the majority of the banks operational costs.