Within the project “Support to Electoral Reforms”, a four-day training workshop was held for the State Election Commission and the employees of the regional offices (RO). The focus of these workshops were topics related to general election information, communication and interaction with voters, elections – concept, history, suffrage, rights and responsibilities of civil servants, interaction with new voters and voter education campaigns, coping with challenging situations (active listening, professional behavior, body language), human resource management, cyber hygiene and election security, protection of electoral integrity and protection of voter data.
The first day of the training focused on general information related to elections and communication and interaction with voters, the history of elections was discussed, as well as the right to vote and aspects of the right to vote, the electoral system and models, as well as voter communication and interaction, the Code of Administrative Servants, new voter interaction and voter education and campaigns and challenging situations. On the first day of the working session, was organized a quiz for the attendees and group work, and productive discussions were opened.
The second day of the workshop was on human resource management. Through interactive lectures, SEC staff had a rare opportunity to perfected their skills on topics such as the basics and evolution of human resource management (the main roles of HRM in the organization, which is the real manager of people in an organization), organizational behavior (which makes organizations successful and alive, communication channels, desired and undesirable work behaviors, communication styles …) employee engagement (how people are motivated to bring more potential and energy to work, notion of engagement, preconditions for incentive engagement) and “learning organization” (from human resources to human capital and notion of competence and mastery).
The third working session was dedicated to cyber hygiene and election security. Employees were trained in how to manage passwords and back up data, software and hardware, disinformation techniques (attacking or insulting, distorting the truth, distracting, harassing and creating or deepening divisions, abusing social networks, misinformation politicians, creating fake portals during elections…) and other information distortions and their impact on the election process and to protect the integrity of elections.
The last workshop was thematically related to the protection of voters’ personal data, which are good and bad practices in data protection, GDPR and other personal data protection systems.
This four-day workshop was preceded by the first series of workshops for training, promotion and strengthening of the capacities of the regional offices of the State Election Commission, which were held in January this year. It is envisaged that this type of training of the skills for the work of the employees in the SEC and strengthening of their capacities will take place by 2023.
The purpose of this series of workshops will greatly contribute to improving and enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of the election administration, so that they can provide better services to voters.
