The Department of Knowledge is a federal ministerial department with the following missions:
- Manage the nation's educational system in its two forms, the decentralised system and the centralised system.
- Maintain, modify and distribute the National Encyclopedia.
- Provide mobile medical aid throughout the country, spreading medical standards and knowledge to local institutions.
- Piece together the history of Oceanyka and protect its cultural heritage by obtaining, analysing and safeguarding historical relics.
For these missions the Department of Knowledge has two volunteer organisations at its disposal: the University of Cestlep Exploration Corps and the Oceanykan Red Cross. Furthermore, the elusive Special Pathogen Response and Eradication Division is at its command to act against Oceanyka's worst infectious diseases. Its head is the Minister of Knowledge, aided in their functions primarily by the Rector of the University of Cestlep, though they do possess an array of Assistant-Ministers.
Oceanyka maintains a very unusual public education policy, divided in two parts. One is the centralised system, which consists of 9 local universities spread throughout major urban centres. Despite their varying quality, they all maintain the same examination standards, which originate from the prestigious University of Cestlep. Curiously enough, only around 23% of Oceanyka's university students actually attend classes. The rest are part of the decentralised system, specifically taking correspondence courses, in which professors and students communicate by mail. Some degrees, for example in Medicine, require exam-takers to be present. Another facet of the decentralised system is in pre-higher education, which is entirely managed by local schools (which may be religious, private or public). Attendance is much lower, with about 8% of students present at any given time, the rest relying on correspondence courses (this can be attributed to the fact far more people receive K-12 education than those who choose to get a university degree). Though the quality of these pre-higher education centres varies enormously, they all perform standard examinations created and controlled by the University of Cestlep, thus ensuring a minimum quality of education, through which Oceanykan youths justify their General Certificate of Education. Curiously enough, as more uneducated adults enroll in the educational system, the age distribution has drastically widened. It is not unusual to see 27 year old mercenary gunmen taking classes with 11 year old children, with some even stranger sights such as the 16 year old ex-conscript combat medic passing their Medicine on-site-exams with straight-As, owing to the fact he has more experience with surgery than everyone in the room combined.
Another important duty of the Department of Knowledge is the editing, printing and distribution of the National Encyclopedia in its various forms, of which there are three:
- The Student's Encyclopedia, of which there are 6 volumes, one for every two years of pre-higher education. These contain all that a student needs to self-teach themselves over 12 years of learning, though the first years require parental aid for younger students.
- The full National Encyclopedia, which is divided into 30 general and 13 national volumes. The first part is essentially a recollection of mankind's general knowledge, while the second describes all that is known of Oceanyka's history, society, economy, geography and biology with enormous precision. Catalogues allow citizens to order specific volumes of the National Encyclopedia depending on the field of knowledge which they seek.
- The Academic Addendums, specialised for certain subjects at a higher-education level, providing the backbone for Oceanyka's higher education curriculum.
The Department of Knowledge does not directly offer a medical service, but it is tasked with preparing, arming and deploying the Oceanykan Red Cross.
Finally, this ministerial department is wholly responsible of running the "Lindy & Jones" National Museum, an institution dedicated towards safeguarding and analysing ancient relics and ruins from Oceanyka's pre-colonial period. Its primary mission is to clear the uncertainty that surrounds Oceanyka's mysterious past and figure out the true history of the Federation. To aid the National Museum in its duties, the Department of Knowledge trains, arms and deploys a number of University of Cestlep Exploratory Corps for archeological expeditions.