Executive Officer

The Executive Officer, also known as the XO, is responsible for making sure that all station departments are well-staffed and running optimally. As such, they are entrusted with the ability to modify crew assignments and access levels via an ID modifier console, something that only the Commanding Officer or AI can do otherwise. They are also responsible for managing the Supply and Service departments, as well as managing any personnel without an active Head of Staff.

The Executive Officer is equal in authority to the other line officers, and does not outrank any of them. The Executive Officer answers directly to the Commanding Officer.

The Role
The Executive Officer's primary concern is with managing personnel across the ship. This primarily consists of ensuring that any department with a staffing or access issue has it corrected promptly; if a promotion, demotion, or access change is required, the Executive Officer is expected to call up the affected personnel, update their IDs appropriately, and update any and all relevant employee records.

Beyond this, the Executive Officer is officially in charge of the Service and Supply departments. Under normal circumstances, both of these are fairly self-managing, and little active intervention is required; the Deck Officer is expected to handle day-to-day operations of the Supply department, and the various Service jobs are not critical to ship operations and are fairly idiot-proof. Still, if there is a problem in either, it is the Executive Officer's job to get it sorted out.

The XO also has the responsibility of managing any personnel without a department head, whether said department head simply isn't available (Engineering lacking a Chief Engineer, for example) or the personnel in question simply don't have a superior (Passengers). It is the XO's job to make sure that everything runs smoothly with regards to these personnel. Depending on the situation, this may be as simple as making sure that the Passengers know to stay out of trouble or as complex as managing an entire department.

Being the 2nd in command in the ship, be prepared to be responsible for executing the CO's orders. This means paperwork, logistics and ground work.

In the event of the Commanding Officer not being present, being unfit for duty, dying, or being otherwise unavailable, the Executive Officer is next in line in the chain of command. They take command of the Intrepid until such time as a Commanding Officer is available.

Reassignment
Your other job is reassigning people when they come to your desk with one or more access requests. Make sure that he or she has a good, justified reason to want a job change. A Janitor who suddenly wants to become a Corpsman is a good example of someone who should be heavily scrutinized.

Feel free to deny someone's transfer request if you get a poor explanation as to how someone suddenly came into possession of his or her sudden inter-department knowledge.

If someone's job transfer request isn't completely ridiculous, then it's time for you to do some background checks. Make sure the crew member knows what they're (going to be) doing inside of his or her new department. Once you've determined someone is a potential candidate for a job transfer, it's a good idea to grab one of several versions of job transfer form. Pick out one that you like and give the form to the guy waiting for his job change; ask him to fill it out. Keeping a record of all of the access changes you give out is key to keeping everyone else informed about what you're doing and keeping you out of the brig.

Here comes the hard part. Now that you have a filled out form, you should get it signed and stamped by an appropriate head of staff. Usually, this involves getting the department head's attention in one way or another, be it talking to them over the radio or sending your man to the department itself. Keeping a record of a department head's consent on file is usually one of the best ways to prove that your access change wasn't completely illegal. The shorthand version of this process would be to inform the head of staff in question about the transfer over the Command radio channel and get quick consent from there.

Finally, when everything is signed, stamped, and filled out, you can sign the form yourself. Ask the man for his identification card so that you can officially give them the requested job title and access. Unless someone would like a specific job title, make sure to use the generic job titles near the top of the screen so that military police can identify that person much more easily with their fancy SecHUDs.