Clips from the Clerk for Aug. 13, 2020

Defending Digital Democracy Project (D3P)

SAGUACHE COUNTY - The Clerk and Recorder’s team participated in the Defending Digital Democracy Project (D3P). They offered a three-day online course for clerks, elections staff, county communications staff, IT staff and others.

Great news - it is a significant course, so the Secretary of State’s Election division has offered to give anyone that completes the course/test 2 credits for HAVA recertification for the next cycle.

D3P is a project of the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School on cybersecurity training and exercises.

The Defending Digital Democracy Project (D3P) is delivering a national training tour tailored for state and local election officials as we prepare for the 2020 General Election. D3P’s work is committed to supporting officials in protecting the elections process.

Key training topics:

  • Operations Management and Incident Tracking
  • Incident Response / Crisis Communications
  • Information Operations (Identifying, responding and reporting disinformation and misinformation incidents)
  • Special topics including COVID-19 and related cybersecurity and disinformation considerations

Each training included some form of:

  • Prework: Short checklists, templates and self-assessment questionnaires
  • Classroom training: Best practices, current trends that may impact our work
  • A live simulation: A chance to validate our processes, and generate actionable information for post-training follow up
  • Action plan and ongoing support: Develop list of actionable “next steps” to implement after training and contact the training team for any additional post-training support
  • Handouts and deliverables: Received a customized plan, playbooks, handouts, checklists and other soft copy materials to disseminate among our team and reference throughout the year.

They were happy to support accreditation/certification requirements to help attendees receive credit for their time.

The current environment for elections is becoming complicated, with increased threats to a fair, transparent and secure process. We are faced with malicious cybersecurity actors, misinformation, constrained financial resources and a global pandemic.

Our team felt this training was beneficial. As we continue our work to serve you, we will be better able to connect people, information and processes within the operating environment so that we can perform effectively and efficiently when the stakes are high. After all, “people” make elections successful.