CyberSim Ghana: DemTech Pilots Digital Security Learning Game for Election Observers

Earlier this year, DemTech visited longtime NDI partners at the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD Ghana) in Accra. Over three days, NDI worked with members of CDD Ghana’s elections, IT, and communications teams to help identify and address their most critical risks heading into their observation of the upcoming Ghanaian elections. Informed by a holistic risk assessment process and tailored to CDD Ghana’s needs, the three-day workshop combined traditional digital security training with a pilot of NDI’s newest version of CyberSim, funded by Microsoft, designed specifically for citizen election observers. 

For those unfamiliar, CyberSim is an experiential learning exercise developed by NDI to enable participants to feel the impact of digital insecurity in a safe, fictional environment. With versions tailored to the needs of civil society organizations, parliaments, and political parties, CyberSim aims to facilitate buy-in for and implementation of better organizational security practices before a crisis occurs.

After two days of hands-on training covering topics ranging from device security and secure communications to data management and incident response, CDD staff put their new knowledge to the test through a game of the new CyberSim for Citizen Election Observers. The CyberSim exercise provided realistic examples of the unique threats faced by election observers, illustrating to participants how the success of their observation activities can be closely tied to their digital security policies, practices, and incident response preparedness. As one participant noted, CyberSim ”showed me that in the elections process there are a lot of unexpected issues that may arise that we need to anticipate ahead of time [….] because if we do not it will weaken our efforts at successfully doing an election observation.” Another shared that “[CyberSim] opened my mind to potential threats or crises that could affect our observation efforts.” When paired with the knowledge shared during the preceding two days of training, this pilot of CyberSim showed just how valuable innovative training methods like simulations can be in deepening training participants’ understanding of the importance of digital security.

Given the success of the pilot, as with past versions of CyberSim, NDI plans to widely share this iteration of the game with fellow digital security trainers and the global election observation community.