March 27, 2025 AZBSN Digital Access Task Force Recording

10:14PM Mar 27, 2025

Speakers:

Steve Peters

Erin Lorandos

Paul Ross

Mala Muralidharan

Lucy Howell

John Kelly

EJ John

Kelly Krusee

Kristi King

Demian Kolff

Paul Wagner

Sarah Jayne

Traci Morris

Oksana Beatty

Keywords:

Digital Equity

tribal digital sovereignty

broadband office

cybersecurity

data sovereignty

tribal nations

cybersecurity clinic

high school initiative

cybersecurity awareness

tribal consent

bead program

digital inclusion

cybersecurity workforce

cybersecurity education

cybersecurity policy.

Digital Equity

Cyber Security Camps

Scholarship Opportunities

Virtualization Software

Remote Participation

University of Alabama

Mentorship Training

Cyber Safety Workshops

Cyber Security Strategy

Digital Inclusion

AI and Cyber Security

Rural Students

Technology Barriers

Community Engagement

Technical Support.

Okay, good morning, everybody. To see you all here this morning. As always, we like to start with introducing any new people who have joined us today, or have we haven't seen for a while, and so, excuse me. So Paul Wagner, we're going to introduce you later. You're going to be on the agenda, and people may remember you. And Tracy, you can just briefly introduce yourself if you want, and then we'll introduce you more when we get to your presentation this morning. Tracy, are you there?

Dr Tracy Morris, citizen of the Chickasaw, Nation of Oklahoma, Director of American Indian policy institute. I've got a bit more of an introduction when I speak.

Yep. Sounds good, okay? And Sarah Jane, who are you? Please?

Good morning. I'm here from the business development and engagement department at Pima Community College.

Good, great. Thanks. Are you new over there?

I'm new in this position? Yes. Okay,

great. We appreciate you guys coming from that department. So with that, let's jump into the the agenda this morning, and anybody else that I missed that's new this morning. So just a reminder, if you haven't seen it yet, that Paul Ross did an amazing video Arizona broadband, and I have been sending out the link to it. If you haven't seen it, you definitely should. He did really awesome job, and it's great way to represent Arizona. So just wanted to remind you about that, and then getting on with the agenda this morning. So just, just first of all, a reminder that I do send out the newsletter, try to get it out right fairly soon after the meeting that does include the recording, the transcript, the chat and everything. So if you either miss this meeting, or you wanted to follow up on something you heard at the meeting, that you should have all the links and information available to you. So just wanted to remind you about that and then moving on. So our agenda this morning that we're going to get our updates from the broadband office. I don't believe the Department of Ed is here today, and, of course, the State Library, and then, and then we're going to get an update on why put that in the agenda, but we'll be hearing from Kelly and Erin from the broadband office. And then we have two other presentations this morning, and basically introductions. So basically talking about tribal nations in Arizona with Dr Tracy Morris, who's the executive director of the American Indus, Indus Indian policy institute, speaking about tribal digital sovereignty. And you'll also hear from if he's here today, I haven't seen him yet. EJ John, who's the tribal policy advisor with the governor's office on Tribal Relations and okasana, if I pronounce that correctly, who is the new ACA tribal liaison. So we're going to be hearing from them and then about cybersecurity. Paul Wagner, with the University of Arizona is going to be talking about the great work that they're doing and availability of resources in the state. So that's the agenda for today. And so let's just go ahead and get started. Erin, you want to give us a quickie update, please? Sure

thing. Good morning, everyone. My name is Erin Loran. I'm the Digital Equity program manager in the state broadband office, which sits in the Arizona Commerce Authority. Not a ton to update on the de front, as this group has heard in the past, the information around the Digital Equity sub grants has been posted, and we hosted the first of two sessions going over those requirements and answering any questions that folks have. The recording has been posted on our website, so if you missed the first one, you can review it. However, the content will be the same for the second one, and the second one is coming up on April 8. So we'll go ahead and cover that information again and answer any questions that folks may have. Um, I think that's my biggest update.

Hold on, just a second,

rid of that. Me.

Oh, that's gone. Okay.

I think that's most of the updates for the de side of things, unless there are any questions. And of course, I'll drop some links in my contact in the chat here momentarily. Okay,

and Erin, I'm sure there's nothing that, at least that I've seen at this point about changes at the federal level that you want to comment on, because I don't know what there is in the

yeah, we're just business as usual for right now, and, you know, preparing, but not changing anything, of course. So, you know, our big implementation strategy is the sub grants. So no matter what we will be doing those as long as we're, you know, allowed to, so we have to be ready to to turn that information back in at the end of our our timeline from NTIA. So we're preparing to do that.

Okay, and Erin, I don't know if you or Kelly are going to talk about you guys have a presentation coming up regarding the the Digital Equity grants at week or so? Yeah,

that's what I just mentioned. We had the first one on March 11, and then the second one is on April 8.

Yep, good. Any question for Erin, if not, let's move on to Kelly Chrissy, who's the broadband Community Engagement Manager with ACA Kelly, you're on

All right. Good morning. Perfect timing. My dogs are going berserk. Hopefully you can't hear them. My name is Kelly. Steve introduced me, so I feel discombobulated. How's that for a word? Steve trying to work it in anyway. Good morning. Everyone. Nice to see you. Thanks for having me. As Steve mentioned. My name is Kelly from the broadband office, Community Engagement Manager, and I do have some updates. Last week, Steve and Rory had some questions that I was unclear on, so I wanted to circle back on those. But as you all may or may not know we are in between our round one and round two of applications for bead so round two did close 20 days ago, on March 7, and as I've said before, we received 147 applications. So now what that means for us is is going through and reviewing, assessing, evaluating those applications, and then we will also move into negotiations. So we will reach out to entities who applied and start negotiations with them, and none of that will be public. So the big question is, When will the state, or, you know, when will it be public who was selected from round one, and that actually isn't public until NTIA approves that, which will be late in the fall. So part of the our public or our final proposal, and also our public comment period. So basically, until they sign that sub grantee contract, we can't go public with that information. So what will be public before round two opens? And in the days or the weeks leading up to that, there will be a map that will be published that will show what areas were picked up in round one. So as we enter into round two, folks will have an idea of what areas project areas are open for application. So round two will open June 3, and we are hoping for late May to have that public map available again. It will not show the details of who applied for what area, but it will show what areas were applied for and covered in round one, and it will show what areas are available for round two leading into round two for applications. So that's June 3. It is a 30 day window. It is a quick window for applications for round two. So I think at that point, those are my updates from the office. Our new director does start next week. We are excited for that, and we thank Keith Watkins, our interim state broadband director, who has been filling in since Sandip left. And we're excited to welcome Nick next week. And I think that's it for me. I can plug in some links to website and details, but also answer any questions.

Okay, thanks. Any questions for Kelly.

Go ahead. Tracy, I heard, I heard something yesterday I was on a call talking about, I think it was federal reserve of Atlanta. Baby, going to do a talk, but they had their bead, state bead program person there, and she was talking that she is hearing her she's a policy person. She's hearing that the speed for bead bill, which won't, they don't think pass, but it's going to be used as the road map for the new director when. They go in, and then that woman who's going in is pregnant, so it's going to be the interim director running it, they said. So I don't know. Is that? Is that just gossip, or is that? Is that? Is that what we're looking at, speed for bead guidelines, anything or

anything. Dr Morris, I appreciate it. Yeah, I was in a call yesterday with Washington State broadband office, and that was discussed as well. So there's a lot of conversation, a lot of speculation, and we just keep saying at this point, there is no clear guidance. Until we have guidance from NTIA, we are staying the course, which is what other state broadband offices are doing as well. And until that we receive official guidance. We have to stick with what we have told NTIA we are doing. We have provided outlines in our and plans in our approved initial proposal, volume two. And so we are sticking with that, as is every other state broadband office, but staying in tune with conversations that are happening. We are hearing everything like everyone else, and but until we are given that guidance by our federal program officer and NTIA, we will stay the course.

Thank you. I was just wondering if anybody else has heard it. Thank you. Yeah. Well, we,

we, I think what we're seeing at this point, Tracy, and of course, nobody knows, as you may know, that we've been we were doing a series on what we know, what we think we know, what we don't know, and what we knew yesterday and don't know today is changing from day to day. Least my perception, and Mala and others jump in if I'm if I'm off target here. But I think basically the same thing that Kelly was saying, and what you were asking Tracy is, there's going to be changes to bead there's no question about that. What that looks like is hard to say. There's been all kinds of recommendations and proposals cutting bead in half and using the other half of the money for Elon Musk and and so forth. So there's just lots of stuff floating around. But there's no final decisions on anything at this point in time. So Mala, did I hit? Hit it correctly?

Yes, you did. There will be changes to the changes. Yep.

So we're just all kind of waiting to see what that's going to look like. So any question? Any more questions for Erin or Kelly? Okay, so Nicole is not here today. I don't think Matthew is here. He was going to try to make it. Matthew is with USD USDA, and was going to talk about the Community Connect grants that USDA has out on the street now. And I did include information about that in the newsletter, and we'll include it again this week. So just wanted to make sure you knew that Mala, do you want to say anything about the Supreme Court hearing yesterday,

I could and if anyone else wants to jump in and add to it, because I was kind of in and out of listening to it, as I had yesterday with the E Rate deadline, application deadline. So there were a lot of calls inquiries about things that I that needed last minute attention, but I listened to most of it. The for those who who don't have the background about what this is, oh, first of all, I'm Mala Muralidharan. I'm from the State Library. I'm the State E Rate administrator. Mala I have it in big block letters Introduce yourself on my notes, and I just skipped over it, huh? Yeah, okay, so it's kind of roughly $9 billion of Universal Service Fund that is at stake. And it had been earlier ruled, as you know, hunky dory, by the 11th Circuit, but the Fifth Circuit, Fifth Circuit Courts, they said, No, you know, there was consumer research, which is a conservative non profit organization that challenged the fund, arguing that about the about delegation, the idea that Congress can't hand over its legislative powers to other entities like FCC and to USAC, the group called for the said that the fund was illegally collected and illegally distributed, and that was that's the case. There were almost 35 to 40 organization. That filed for the fund and about the consequences and about of not having it, about all of the reasons why it should be continued. And yesterday was the oral hearing for for the for that at the Supreme Court. Of course, we don't know whether any I mean, the decisions are not likely to come before June, but if it comes before June, I'd be surprised with all, all of the other things that are going on, you know, in at the national level. But proponents of the universal service the service fund say that they are cautiously optimistic after the hearing of the oral arguments. Joseph Ender Joey, vendor, who is the Executive Director of Shelby, the school's health and library broadband coalition, said that he thinks that the majority of judges will uphold the constitutionality of the USF and that and they, they heard the the arguments that millions of people rely on it, including students, job seekers, veterans, seniors, they they will not be able to access the internet. Schools and libraries will struggle and suffer as it is, I can see a drop this year in the applications, because in a school the libraries are worried about their share. You know, as far as E Rate is concerned, they only get up to the NSLP amount, the National School Lunch percentage amount. So if a school district or a library is in a school district that has 80% of its kids on the school lunch program, then they have to shell out of their pocket 20% so if they went up to let's, let's throw a number 100 gig, then they have to pay for 20% of that 100 gig on their own, on their own budgets. And so they this year, they were really cautious about it. And I think many of them applied for a lot lower, only up to the extent that their budget can support even though their need was more so this, I hope this came through well in the arguments that this is important, E Rate is important, and so are the other other programs that This supports, multiple judges actually question the consequences of what would happen if the if we didn't have the fund, both the legal consequences as well as the real life consequences. And it was well articulated, you know, by the arguments. Sarah Harris was the acting solicitor and argued a heart out that this policy was not the right one. It cannot be sustained at the way the rate, at the weight which is going, and also saying that, wouldn't it be nice for FCC to have a rainy day fund where they can get find an additional ten billion lying around and kind of you know that that actually got some some laughs. But three of the liberal judges, Sonia Sotomayor, ketanji Brown, Ilana Kagan plus Amy Connie Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh all appear to be receptive to the argument of the statute, as well as you sex role and FCC role. The ones who expressed skepticism were Justice Clarence, Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, they pressed on with the government whether this was meaningful, and they they wanted to put some constraints on FCC ability to collect and raise the cash. So I don't know if I have covered it all. If anyone else listen to it and wants to jump in, please feel free. But it's I don't want to be too optimistic, but at the same time, I think my heart tells me that I should be so. Though my head is whirling with all of the things that are going on at the federal level that I don't know what is going to happen next, you know, with with the one of the other things that we that, I mean, I don't know if you want me to give the rest of the update right now. Yeah, go ahead, Mala, while you're at it. Okay, one of the other things that we are monitoring is the hot spots. And, you know, while the yesterday was the application deadline for that as well, you know, with the E Rate, and there, there, there are a lot of applications. I mean, I haven't actually downloaded to see how many. But I think Arizona has applied, not only Arizona, of course, all of the nation has applied for a lot of hot spots now, if they rule that this is illegal and not to be allowed because the original statute said that E Rate funds were supposed to be used on premise only, then we are in big trouble, because all of these organizations have to find a different way of funding it, fortunately for us, at least AC st stepped in, and they have a good program that we can use with not as many strings attached. And if you're if you're interested, please check out AZ strut internet. And I think it was, I'll put the link in the chat once I'm done talking, so at least we have an option, an alternate. But many, many of the schools and libraries will struggle if this is not brought. I mean, if this is considered illegal, there is a CRA that we are expecting to be to come to the floor, but with all of the things that are happening right now and the diversion with yesterday's news about, you know, the Yemen attack. I think it's going to take a back seat, but let's see. Let's see. I just want to be optimistic and hope that it does not come to the floor, so at least this year, it will go through, and that will give us time to figure out a different way of funding hot spots for those who need it,

other than we need. I'm sorry. Do you have anything else real quickly?

No, no, no, no, I was just going to hand it back to you. Steve. Okay.

Thanks, Mala. So John Kelly, you want to do a quickie before you drop off?

Yeah. Thanks, Steve. John Kelly, with triad, because government relations consulting firm and also the designated lobbyist for ATIC, the executive committee the ACA authorized me yesterday to testify in opposition to Senate Bill 1322, which proposes to move the state broadband office from the Arizona Commerce Authority to The Arizona Department administration. There are a number of folks that did testify against that bill. There was one witness that did testify for the bill. It was kind of an interesting hearing. I think that in particular, Keith Watkins from ACA made a very compelling set of arguments as to why it would be disruptive and damaging to the state Broadband Program, particularly because of the timing of grants that have to be executed under the bead program and the existing contracts that are assigned to ACA and are not likely to be transferable to 80 away. So the committee voted to oppose and kill the bill on a vote of four to three and and all all of us that were testifying against the bill celebrated, walked out into the hallway, and then I got a text from a colleague of mine saying they just reconsidered the vote, and they ended up voting it out the the one member, his name is Ralph heap, he's a freshman, said I didn't really want this bill to die in this environment. I want there to be more discussion about it, so he reluctantly voted to to continue it. So we'll continue to have that debate. It's already passed the Senate. It's going to go to the House floor sometime in the next, I don't know, two weeks or so, so that'll be a continuing issue of of interest to this group.

Okay? Thanks. Any quick questions for John before we move on, if not John. So John, the only thing is, is there any other groundswell of support for this bill?

No, there's. There really isn't. The individual who testified for it is concerned largely about some deficiencies in our emergency network system, including the 911 system. He's from Payson. There's some redundancy issues up there. I think Payson applied for some 911 support through the bead program, but the bead program doesn't support 911 so I think he's on to something in terms of what some problems are, but not necessarily what the solution. Question is, and so I'm working on some 911 issues as well, and we'll continue to collaborate with him to see if we can find another pathway.

Okay, thanks, John. Appreciate it. Thank you. Okay, so let's get down to our meeting. Potatoes for the meeting today, and let's talk about the what's happening with tribal nations. We're pleased to welcome Dr Tracy Morris, who is the Executive Director of the American Indian policy institute, speaking about tribal sovereignty. And Tracy you also, I think, are the director of another initiative related so we want to hear from that. And then we'll hear quickly from EJ John, who EJ has been a pretty regular participant with us, and a quick update from him, who is the tribal policy advisor with the governor's office on tribal relations. And then Hoka Sana if I hope they pronounce that correctly. Betty, who is the or beati? I want to make sure I'm pronouncing those correctly. Who's the new ACA tribal liaison manager? So with that, Tracy, I'm going to turn it over to you. And do you need to share anything?

No, no, I don't have any slide, I'm just gonna talk. Okay, so thank you everyone. As you know, my name is Dr Tracy Morris, and I'm a citizen of Chickasaw, Nation of Oklahoma. I'm gonna attempt to do this early. This is early for me to do a presentation, so forgive me if I sound worse or tired. It is hard for me to function at this time of day, other than do an email. So for those of you who don't know me, I'm the executive director of the American Indian policy institute at Arizona State University, and I've been in that position since 2014 and I'm also a research professor at the Sandra Day O'Connor college of law, which these Institute, a IPI is centered in, and my area of specialty since, like 2009 research and publication has all been tribal broadband, digital sovereignty, digital divide, Digital Equity, Digital Inclusion. Of course, all those things had different names early on, but we didn't call it digital sovereignty back then, either. I've I wrote the first study on internet use in Indian country with Sasha mein rat out of New America Foundation back in the day, and in 2019 I co i co authored a IPIs tribal Technology Assessment, which was the an original study of tribal access, use and availability in 2019 so it came out literally two months, three months before the pandemic. So it's the only original baseline data. It's a small study, but it's original baseline data from pre pandemic. So got new life because of that, unfortunately and Currently, I'm working on a book on the topic of tribal digital sovereignty. I'm an author and a co editor. Theoretically, it was supposed to be out this year, but there's just been too much work going on. So it looks like it's gonna be 2026 I'm talking to my publisher today, and number of folks are writing chapters for that, including myself, Jeffrey Blackwell, Sasha, mein Rath, some professors at the university. EJ has authored a chapter in that as well, which is currently the only finished chapter. Thanks. EJ, thought I'd give you a shout out. So I'm gonna give you a brief overview of our work today and let you know what's going on. You know, I started when I started researching this book on tribal digital sovereignty was much more about crossing the digital divide. But when I started looking globally at what was happening and trying to define what data sovereignty was, was within all this, because there's been quite a groundswell in tribes on data sovereignty, and then I started coming across this term digital sovereignty, especially with the EU and I started researching all that, and then looking at how the global south was using the term digital sovereignty, how the EU uses it in other European countries. And it sort of clicked for me at that point that I wasn't talking about, I didn't need to talk about the digital divide from a deficit model. We could talk about tribal broadband and all of the ancillary related things the ecosystem in terms of a proactive model. And so that's where the term tribal digital sovereignty came from. It's a growth outgrowth out of the global digital sovereignty discussions, and it just changed everything. Hello. Oh, sorry, I'm sorry not me. Lou, so that was that was really an epiphany moment, and it really changed the scope of the book, and it really changed things. And I started looking at how we could talk about the whole ecosystem. Of tribal digital sovereignty. And out of that we we decided to launch a center under the institute dedicated to tribal digital sovereignty. And so we formed it in partnership with the National Congress of American Indians. And in we launched we we launched it. We formed it last year in February, but we launched it formally in July. And so that's kind of where this concept came from, you know, it just, you know, the digital divide is, is so is so narrow, and it's so, you know, negative. And then the work that we're doing, you know, the other thing was, is, you know, we all know it we're out there one day we're talking about broadband, one day we're talking about infrastructure, another day we're talking about equity. I felt like there needed a way to be able to for tribes, to be able to comprehensively talk about this. So that's kind of where that discussion came from. So indigenous digital sovereignty is really the overarching broad term. It's like an umbrella term, so it encompasses everything, network sovereignty, data sovereignty, infrastructure, and it really is the means it's it's really looking at a community's policies and codes that control the data infrastructure and networks. And data sovereignty is a component of that a very important component, but it is not the overarching term. So digital sovereignty is really governance and regulatory and such. So in June, the same week, we launched the Center for tribal digital sovereignty with the National Congress of American Indians, the NCAI adopted a resolution defining tribal digital sovereignty as an exercise of self determination, which was which really meant to create by doing that, the NCAI is a representative body of many of the triad the federally recognized tribes in the United States, certainly not all of them, but it does tend to coalesce through a resolution process, the coalesce consensus and use that for advocacy. So that's the natural place where something like this becomes common vernacular. And it really has become that in a short period of time, it's really, it's, it's really cool to see my term coming back and use them the right way, because we needed something that was that encompassing. So it's really exciting to watch. So they defined it in a resolution, through a resolution and committee process last summer. And it really is. Digital sovereignty is all aspects of a tribal nations digital plan, its footprint, it's tribal codes, it's how it manages data protection. It's how it manages Digital Equity, network infrastructure, development of funding sources, education, you know, public safety, law enforcement, economic and community development and capacity building. It is all the things that we all talk about, you all talked about, that you all are doing just in the US. We don't tend to call it digital sovereignty. That's we just don't call it that is all it is. But in tribes, we are starting to do and it really is. This resolution is meant to support the exercise of sovereignty over the physical infrastructure and the non physical digital space. And so it's, it's seen as a part of tribes creating a plan for comprehensive, proactive digital sovereignty as an act of governance and self determination. So it's it's really exciting. We're still in the very much in the beginning stages, and tribes are just starting to develop their plans. There's some that are actually being very proactive, and every every tribe just says every tribe is no one, no one size fits all. It's going to be that in digital sovereignty plans, what we're really seeing a push for that's emerged to the top quickly is the idea of the creation of regulatory codes and structures so that tribes can control not only the data that comes through their networks, but they're controlling the data that their communities are producing. And it's, it's not really a leap, because, I mean, if it's a if they are a gaming tribe, they're already doing that on the gaming side. It's more a matter of thinking, how do we do that proactively, on our tribal entity side on our government, government, government side. So we've had a lot of asks for the creation of model codes for governance. Some communities are looking at building regulatory bodies. We're seeing discussions of sovereign tribal clouds that are based where the where the we all know the cloud is based somewhere, but where the infrastructure is actually physically based on tribal land. So they can, they can enforce the kind of data sovereignty that community wants to. So in launching the center, we're still, still very much in our infancy. We have, we have the we're building four tranches for the center, our center. We're doing research and scholarship, of course, because we're the university, we're doing capacity building.

We intend to do capacity building and support our partners in doing that. We're developing a coalition of communities serving expert organizations. So this is our partnerships, which includes the indian legal program, the law school, National Congress of American Indians, folks like Matt rantan and his tribal boot camp and tribal broadband boot camp. And then, of course, the creation of a clearing house of information for tribes on digital sovereignty planning. It sounds all these buckets sound good, and some of its stuff we've already been doing, but there's a lot of new stuff happening. We have two major grants right now for this, the new center. We have Ford Foundation grant, and we've been in Ford's portfolio for a long time, but our newer work is going to be focused on digital sovereignty. We've also got an Internet Society grant where, and this is really popping right now. We have just gotten somebody on board, and we are taking all the all the data that's on that internet for all dashboard that is slowly disintegrating over on NTIA website, but we've got all that data, and then we're starting to build our own dashboard for that data, and then pulling the data from other places on to bring it up to date to 2024, so it's just, it's beginning stages, but within two years, we should have a really nice, functioning dashboard on this information for everybody's use as well as you know, a series, I think we have to do 12 community vignettes or explainers, or How are we choose to put that out for, for the the grant requirements. So that's happening right now towards that I'm doing a ton of public speaking on this. I'll be speaking over it, and NTIA a couple of weeks, I'm speaking at the sovereignty symposium in at Oh, you in Oklahoma in June, I was supposed to do an AI presentation next week, but I just couldn't get it done. I've just finished res reservation economics Summit, and we're getting and we did do we did host our first conference in February. I think I might have told you, some of you that at another meeting, we hosted the very first tribal digital sovereignty conference. It was a full day that we tacked on to the indian legal programs wiring the res conference. And it was, it was really, it was really, it was the conference I wanted to see. It was all the people that I knew did this cool stuff, and I brought them all together. So I don't know how next year I'll top that, but we'll figure out something. So that's sort of the the work that we're doing, we have one more project we're getting ready to jump into, and it's a model code project. I don't think it'll probably start till fall. We're working to get a new a new senior policy analyst on board unite. You might know we lost our senior policy analyst to the governor of Governor's office last year, so we're in the final stages of hiring a new person to do that work, especially with building model codes. We'll also probably work with the law school in bringing in one of their clinics to work on this, so that we can get a jump start on on all of that, that sort of work. So there's a lot going on, and it's really exciting work, and it's to support tribes. Everything's to support tribes. And, yeah, so I'll stop there and see if there's any questions, because I think I saw one pop up in the thing. Any

questions for Tracy, please?

Do you? Hi, trace. Dr Norris, I will say, Oh, call me Tracy. It's cool. It's great to meet you. Do you work with U of A at all? Or do you work with, like, the other universities that are also leading tribal or you kind of, like, in your ASU bubble,

we partner a lot, but not really with other universities. Nobody else is really doing digital sovereignty. There's U of A is doing data sovereignty, but it's a it's from a much different perspective. They're doing more global and they're looking at data that's not tribally owned and such. We're talking we are working strictly with lower 48 tribes that are federally recognized and how they can implement and govern the data that they're producing. So it's kind of a different niche. I don't really know of anybody else who's working on digital sovereignty, but there's a lot working in data sovereignty. I've been to conferences and and such, but our comp, our we tend to work more with organizations than other universities that are actually doing the work in Indian country. So like I said, National Congress of American Indians, other think tanks, or some DC folks we work with and such. So we just worked on a spectrum paper on tribal perspectives, on spec or not spectrum. Well, spectrum is happening too, but there's also one on AI we just did so it. Tends to be more with on the ground folks than with other universities.

Got it. Thanks. Any other

questions? I do have a question. This is Damian. I work for T Mobile. So this is an interesting question. Are you, is there some work with the reservation and the actual land itself, to work on the infrastructure of the actual signal? Because I know that I work. I work here in all of Southern I work in all of Arizona, all of New Mexico, Nevada, and that is a huge problem. There's no signal on the reservations.

I live on South Mountain. There's no signal. So I feel you

what happens? But just to finish that, what happens for us is we get schools that call us, you know, small schools that are right on the edge of the res or right in the res and and they want this, and they want that. They want school bus Wi Fi, or they want tracking for the kids. We can't provide it because there's no signal and they don't want to put antennas out there. So do we have Glen,

sir, so I'm not working on the nitty gritty of that. I guess I would probably reach out to certainly, here in Arizona, I'd be reaching out to Gila River talk to them. I'd be reaching out to Han o'tham. They're both pretty advanced their networks. I mean, Gila River, obviously, y'all know them. They've been around for since 87 in California, I'd be looking at Matt rentan and Southern California Tribal Chairman's association for that more nitty gritty info, but I don't know the work on the ground in terms of actual signals. No, I don't.

Yeah, so Northern Arizona and northern New Mexico for us are really hard to serve that population, but so I was just you were hitting on quite a few data points, and I thought maybe that might be a crossover. But thanks

for answering. I tried, but that's not one of them I

understand. Thank you so much.

Okay, any other quick questions for Tracy before we move on one? Introduce a couple of people here. Tracy. Anything else that you want to add

just feel free to reach out to me. My email is t.morris@asu.edu I'm sure you're sharing it. We have a website. It's on our main website. It's just forward slash ctds For center for tribal digital sovereignty. If anybody wants to check out more information, happy to have a conversation. Thank you. Sounds

great. Thanks, Tracy, for being here. This is, I think, your first time. Hopefully it won't be your last. There's a little dig there. Anyway, thanks. Thanks again. So let me do this real quickly. Go.

And, oops,

give me just a second here. J do,

I had him as a spotlight. Well, anyway, let's move on. We I'll try to get them on here in the meantime. But let's start quickly with EJ, who is has been with us for quite frequently. EJ, welcome back again. And As Tracy mentioned to you, the governor's office stole you, stole you away from her. So you want to just give us a quickie update on what's happening with the governor's office, and then we'll get over and meet lokasana.

Yeah, sure. Well, good morning everyone. My name is EJ John, and I am a tribal policy advisor in the governor's office on Tribal Relations. My policy areas that I cover are kind of all infrastructure related, so things like broadband and also community development and economic development, which is a pretty high priority for a lot of tribe communities. So the work that we've done in our office lately has been really just trying to address a lot of the concerns from tribes, just because of all the potential changes and speculation happening at the federal level with all these different programs, I know that we're really focused on bead right now, and that's a majority of our work in the state broadband offices work. But when you look at the news articles and things from from broadband, from the broadband world, you also see programs mentioned, like the tribal broadband connectivity program is one that kind of falls on those lists of programs that might you know that we need to watch for, of course, Digital Equity initiatives as well. So those are all things that tribes are also aware of, and they're keeping track of, and they're kind of just in the same boat as we are just waiting to see what those official announcements are going to be. But in the meantime. Time, we're trying to figure out what we at the state, in partnership with the broadband office and other state resources, can do to try and figure out how we can, if some of these federal things go away, maybe there's an opportunity for the state to provide something like, you know, this morning, we talked a lot about data. The state has a lot of data. The broadband office as a really robust bead Broadband Map, other agencies like the State Land Department and as one, you know, they're doing really great work to collect broadband data. So you know, that's an opportunity that maybe tribes can benefit from in the future, building on those so, yeah, it's just been a lot of filling in the gaps, or identifying gaps that you know we might be able to fill later on, and we went forward. So I've been working a lot, actually, with Navajo Nation. The Navajo Nation brought that office just because that's kind of where I'm from, my home community. I'm Navajo, and just trying to figure out, because they have a big operation, and so they have a lot of questions, and so sometimes they'll reach out to me, so enough also reaching out to other tribal organizations and tribal agencies here in the state, anytime that our office goes out and does a panel or something like that, you know, we'll get some questions about broadband and some state activities related to telecommunications and broadband. And surprisingly, we've also been getting a lot of questions from our own state agencies about data sovereignty. You know what Dr Morris covered earlier? Yeah, how do they move forward to make sure that they're respecting the data concerns coming from tribes, the information sharing concerns. So we are kind of educating some of our fellow state agencies and state entities on some of the considerations for that. So it's a lot of educating and a lot of just trying to make sure that we are able to continue to implement our bead proposal and implement the governor's connect, connect AZ, connect all AZ initiative. Always, I always forget the official name for things, but, you know, just to make sure that we're there to to fulfill those commitments that the governor and the state are working on, but a lot of the work and a lot of the activity right now is in the broadband office. Oksana does a lot of really great work. The broadband office is doing a lot of great work. Of great work to do that tribal outreach, to have those conversations. And also the new director coming in, Mr. Nick Capozzi, is coming from our office, from this from the governor's office, and they've had a chance to work with him, and he's also really knowledgeable, and I believe he officially starts on the 31st but correct me if I'm wrong and that's correct. Okay, so, yeah. So he's, you know, I've been talking to him about some of the tribal concerns and relaying that information to him, doing those questions to him, so I'm sure that he'll continue, you know, the the work, and continue to reach out and trying to fulfill and get that tribal broadband work going. So I don't know if there's any specific questions or anything else you want me to follow up on, but that's just a quick update of what we're doing at triad.

Glad to see you as always. Any quick questions for EJ, we do need to move on fairly quickly here, but definitely want to give okasana. If I'm not pronouncing your name correctly, you need to tell me so. But any questions for EJ before we move on? Okay, so okasana, want to introduce yourself quickly and kind of give us an update on what you're working on. Please. Yes.

Good morning everyone. Okasana Beatty, white mount Patty, tribal member and serve as tribal liaison here at Arizona Commerce Authority as far as early December, a lot of what Kelly and Erin shared. I'm sure this morning I caught on a little bit of tail end of what Erin had shared, and then also a lot of collaboration with EJ As well, hit the ground running, as far as being the tribal liaison for for the broadband and Digital Equity and also sharing with tribes who ACA is, who are we? What is that awareness that tribal communities would need to know? Future tense, you know, so we've here at ACA, struggled with respectfully with some tribes, tribes reciprocating communication with us. So broke down a few barriers with that, and also now have already booked calendar for April to meet with tribes that, you know, I'm meeting in front of Council, letting them know about the, you know, broadband bead again, and then also with Erin's work, because this is essential for tribes councils. Tribal leaders to know who we are, and then when it becomes a place when we need something like a consent from the tribe, which we all know that resolutions can be a heartburn for tribes. So definitely working with all 22 tribes there, definitely here. EJ, you know, we do see each other out there in the field. So it's really great to, you know, have another support out there and someone who can advocate for for us as well. That was a lot, but that's pretty much my work. I've been meeting with one week. I had three tribes, which I loved. We were down south Arizona, and then up to Navajo Nation, and then right across to Hopi yesterday, I was at St Carlos Apache tribe, and then went up to Tonto Apache. So definitely out there. So if you have connections, maybe I met with this tribe, or maybe I'm trying to get in touch with some tribes I could put my email or maybe Erin and Kelly could help me out and put my email address in there. But yeah, just really quickly. I know we are limited on time, and as Kelly said, I'm not sure Kelly did say, but we will be at NTTA. So did a lot of outreach to tribal communities as well. And so we do have information so far, as far as you know, which we can connect with there as well. So I'm happy to answer any questions or meet with individuals at next week's event.

So Cassandra, for people who may not know about the consent letter requirements, can you speak to that please?

Yeah, so, so this is going to So currently, this letter is with our legal team. So we want to make sure you know that we are covering all base. And this letter is, should a tribe be awarded for bead what this is consent, saying that the tribe is giving consent to deploy fiber on that land, because we know how precious you know, the tribal lands currently are, and so we just want to ensure that, you know, this is going to be a federal requirement, so that we get those consent resolutions from each tribe that that we will be deploying a fiber to and respectfully, there are tribes who are saying, No, thank you to bead. So, you know, we I just kindly asked that, you know, they just let us know which they have been. So that's been really insightful as well. Did I

understand? I thought I saw that they were required to provide a letter of consent, regardless of whether they're applying for funding or not. Am I mistaken about that,

I would have to double check on that letter again. Forgive me if I missed something again. I've been out on travel, but I've you know, Kelly has been my person here at home. Well, I I'm out traveling and yes, so

yeah, um, Steve, with that it is required from our understanding and what we're reading with NTIA guidelines, it is required only from tribes who are actually deploying on their lands. But as ACA, we are reaching out to all tribes. We want to have formal documentation if tribes do not or withhold that consent, we still want to gather that, so we are going to do our best to gather that from every tribe so that we have it on record on behalf of the tribe, as far as you know, their wants and their needs, and then we can share that to NTIA. And that is

not a requirement. It's just a request or preference that they get that letter from you guys, even if they're not deploying

the NTIA, the the withholding is what is not required. So for instance, if a, if a tribe does not consent, really, NTIA is looking only for the consent. We are also asking for, you know, the the rejection, essentially, as well. So if there is a tribe, and there are, I think there are a few tribes who might be electing to say, You know what, no, we don't want this. That's what we do want to have on record as well. But as we submit the final proposal, NTIA is asking only for the official consent of yes, we consent to this on our tribal lands. Yeah. So I feel like I made that clear as much,

and I can, I can add on a little bit of that too. So again, you know, just my own reading and understanding of the program that tribal consent is required for anybody who's bidding for a project that will serve tribal lands. So Arizona took the step to create project areas for tribal lands. You know, their own specific project areas. So any projects that are proposed to take place on those tribal lines are going to require that tribal risk consent. And I haven't had a chance to listen in on too many conversations at NTIA, but the last I heard from them last year was that consent would have to take form of what tri. Government resolution. So whatever process that you know the tribe has, you know that's that's a process that would have to take place to get that tribal consent, and that might look different for all Arizona swing two tribes. Every tribe is their own government system. So obviously there'll have to be some more detail, and we'll have to figure out more about what that process might look like, and so that's what, that's what you know. At least you know for myself, I've been kind of my understanding of how that is going to operate. Great.

Thanks. EJ, Okay, anything else that you want to add or we move on? No, thank you for inviting me. Okay, any other questions for EJ, or okasana Before we move on, okay, if not,

Spotlight, the spotlight and Paul, are you still here with us?

I'm still here.

All right. Oh, there you are. So I'm going to spotlight for everybody. So I want to welcome Paula back again. He's been here several times, but they're doing some really amazing stuff in cyber security, and it's a great resource for everybody. So I'm just going to turn over to Paul Wagner, and Paul, you want to just introduce yourself real quickly. You have a number of things that you're kind of leading over there, so I'm going to let you kind of give us an overview of that and whatever else. I know we don't have a lot of time left, but I apologize, but go ahead, please. Yeah, I'll

go fast, just real quickly. I just want to make sure you can see the Arizona cyber security clinic slide. Yes. Okay, perfect. So my name is Paul Wagner. I'm with the University of Arizona, the College of Applied Science and Technology. I'm a faculty member that teaches cyber security and variety of different topics, but I'm also the director of the Arizona cyber security clinic here, and the Arizona cyber security Academy, which I'll talk about here in a little bit. And what as I go through these initiatives, it really is an expansive and it's all focused on the state of Arizona, not necessarily the University of Arizona. So we'll partner with any of the other any college, any community college, doesn't really matter, anybody that wants to kind of further the initiative of Digital Equity, I'll add that in there. But then digital literacy, Cyber Security Awareness, and literacy securing organizations and stuff like that. So we're trying to be very broad. And I think it was two weeks ago that one of my colleagues, Angelo, was here, maybe three weeks ago, talking about where the academy kind of fits into this. But I'll quickly cover some of the initiatives that we have going on, and then we can go from there. So I just want to talk a little bit about our academic programs and really focusing on the graphic on the right hand side. So the cyber workforce, a lot of people, due to media or whatever it is, think that it's the hacker in the hoodie, somebody that's like working in the basement, typing on a computer, doing all of these things. In reality, the cybersecurity field is very broad. It's like the medical field. We have students that come in and say, hey, I want to be a cyber person. It's like, okay, great. It's like coming in saying, I want to be a doctor. Well, are you going to be a brain surgeon, heart surgeon, pediatrics? What are you going to do? Cyber security is the same thing where there's some jobs I don't like saying that you'll not touch a computer, because is there any job where you don't touch a computer work, word processing, that kind of stuff. But it's not about coding. It could be about law. It could be about policy. It could be about digital rights and sovereignty. It can be about fill in the blank for those things. So it is a very expansive discipline, and it really is embedded in all other fields. So business has a cybersecurity component. Our daily lives have a cybersecurity component. If you haven't been aware there's a huge vulnerability if you're a Chrome browser user that is actively being exploited currently. So if you have not hit the little update your Chrome browser, please do that immediately. I know it sucks when you got to open up your tabs, but it's something that's very serious. They can get access to any of the tabs. I'm terrible with tabs. I got multiple screens and 40 or 50 different tabs open at any given time. They can actually cross into any of those tabs. If you get your banking information up and you're checking your email, you can move from those browsers. There's no more sandboxing. That's the vulnerability. So the consortium of cybersecurity clinics is motivation, kind of tied to Google. So the University of California, Berkeley runs the consortium trying to get the expansion of cybersecurity clinics, which were one of them that started in 2024 and our idea is to work with community organizations. You see them here, really, we look at under resourced organizations, depending on the political climate of how things are going. Talking about underserved sometimes has that. I believe it's a positive connotation, but we just use under resource so if the organization doesn't have a cybersecurity or an IT entity within them, we. Will work with them to conduct risk assessments, provide security awareness training going through to help them become more cyber secure, whether they can access the statewide cyber readiness Grant Program, or there's another organization that's just started, a non profit that's there to align with non state funded kind of entities and more private sector work. So kind of a great connection between all of these things tying into this is the high school initiative. So right now we're working with Chandler, Unified School District, with bachelor High School and Arizona college prep. We reached out to them, but August of last year, thought we'd get about 1015 students and 100 students said yes, 59 of those completed the first phase with that certificate, all free of charge, all on their own time, with some support for the teachers, but it's not part of their classwork, and now they're working with the teachers going through risk assessment modules. And the district actually announced yesterday that they're going to develop 10 to 12 internships for high school students to work with their school district. So I threw a couple of links in this, and Steve, I'll send you these slides, but there's a lot of media coverage about this. This is the first cyber security clinic hosted at a high school in the nation, so they're really leading. And what's going on with that? So really exciting work. Students are like emailing me since yesterday, since we did the ribbon cutting. How do I get involved next? How can I support my community? How can I do this? They're doing research with ASU. These are high school students doing research with PhD students as part of a summer internship, and they're getting paid for that. These students are working with their community organizations. They're starting clubs. They're really being like cyber security activists, trying to support their community and grow in this profession, which is extraordinarily invigorating. So here's a quick picture. We had Ryan Murray down there. All of the students that you see here were provided with a certificate from Department of Homeland Security and the Arizona Cyber Security Initiative. Yeah. So really cool. Another related project which is interesting. It's called a regional sock pilot. So this is done in a couple of different areas across the country. There's one area in Texas that's doing this really funded from the state, so they receive about $7 million a year to run this. We are bootstrapping this. There's not a lot of funding for it, but we want to provide students with experiential learning. And these entities that you kind of see here are going to be partnering or running the pilot, or about to run the pilot in Pima, Pima County, through Pima Community College and the University of Arizona, but providing resources to monitor city governments right now and then we'll expand who those clients are. And as we work through that, how do we secure organizations that don't have connectivity, that are working in different environments, are working with less secure systems. The other thing that I want to cover real quickly is we're also focused on the pipeline for this. So the National Cyber Security teaching academy, which will be on this next slide, we have an 18 credit cyber security certificate for really designed for teachers, but it leads into our master's program. So we're partnering with the Arizona teaching academy to provide that certificate for free for Arizona teachers. And the NCTA program, we had 175 I think we offered 130 scholarships to teachers out of the seven participating. And that says eight universities here, really, at seven, one is kind of a legacy school. They still have a program, but they're not active. There was 100 and I think 80 total applications of those, 46 of them came from Arizona alone. So we are very embedded. There's a need for cybersecurity teachers to do this. Of those due to qualifications. It's NSA funded, so they have to be the citizens we are at 26 that are eligible, and we're working through the admission process right now. But what that allows us to do is identify this. And I apologize, I grabbed this off of a screenshot. We have better ones for this, but you can kind of see where these teachers are located. So even though we have a couple of outliers around the state, predominantly, as we would expect within Phoenix, Tucson and then southern Arizona, kind of on the Borderlands here. But the benefit of that is we know where these teachers are. We have letters of recommendation and what the goals of the school districts are, how they want to partner and build out career technical education programs, what their motivation for this is, what their resources are. So this isn't just we're providing a certificate to teachers. We now have insight into what these schools need, want, and how we can support them effectively to grow this pipeline within Arizona. So really exciting for that piece, some related initiatives I mentioned the cyber security Academy, so that's kind of a level above I would say, the clinic. So the clinic is kind of like one part of the academy, but really focused on K 20 education. You saw that with the NCTA. You see that with the high school program. We feel that we need to empower. Students at whatever layer of their career. Now we're talking like 16 year olds moving into high school graduation, and what are they going to do? But then also that adult learner that's in a field that is no longer viable. It's not paying the bills, it may be just becoming extinct. How do we retrain them and get them back into the workforce effectively, so that 20 plus is one tied to, like, the grade level. But also the plus is, what if they already have a master's degree and they need to come back and retrain and do that, which leads into kind of the workforce development, research and then policy? So we're working on a couple of initiatives to make sure that teachers have the space within their time because they're already overworked and don't have space in their schedule to say, Well, yeah, cyber security is important. Let's add another course. So if we don't really build that in, how do we make that happen? A lot of student camps and stuff like that, which I'll highlight real quickly, but some related initiatives. So we're starting a skill bridge program related to cyber security and artificial intelligence, which can expand beyond veterans. So the skill Bridge Program is something where within the last six months of a veteran's time with whatever their service is, they can work with industry as kind of an internship. It's no cost to the organization. They can't pay these military members because they're receiving federal funds as part of their paycheck.

So really a cool idea to kind of bring that workforce and serve another population that's out there. We're also working on a statewide strategy, partnering with Department of Homeland Security. Had a conversation yesterday, how we bring OEO into this? But how do we really build out a strategic plan for education, K through 20? But then how do we get them employed? How do we work with industry? How do we do we do this? What are our goals? What are the strategic metrics that we can start working for? Local occupation programs is kind of a high school initiative. It's part of the Career and Technical Education thing. In Arizona, there isn't a CTE program for cyber security. So we're working to develop a local occupation program, which is kind of a first step, or at least gives the foundation for other schools to have a specific cybersecurity program, as long as it aligns with industry need, which there's over 20, about 20,000 open positions in Arizona, and 460,000 nationwide, 4 million globally. There's obviously an industry need right faculty and student research, we're trying to from high school all the way through PhD students. How do we figure out, how do we enable a cadre of people to go out and solve problems? So whatever those problems are, for the Department of Defense, for Arizona, for whomever, we need to have that group of researchers that are there ready on standby for a variety of topics that can go up do that work. Couple of cool opportunities. Is, like I said, we want to partner with other universities. This is the first time, at least in cybersecurity, that ASU, U of A and NAU, not to exclude GCU, but the three state universities, the first time, we're coming together for a Cybersecurity Initiative, which I think is amazing. GCU is an amazing partner as well. So bringing them on, we're going to be hosting undergraduate students as of yesterday. This is the first time this has been done in Arizona. We have 284 undergraduate students. Of those, 91 are from the University of Arizona. And the other exciting part is we're predominantly online school. 18 of them want to be on our campus to participate in this. Then in May and October, we're working with the partners that you see here for middle and high school students now, all of these they can come to campus, or they can just do it within their school, or they can do it at home. So we're trying to make it as accessible as possible to make students aware. And sometimes cybersecurity can be a scary field to get into for a variety of reasons, like, I can't code, I can't do this, I can't do this. So we want to eliminate those barriers and make sure that people understand that it is a very accessible career field. And then we're running two summer camps. There's more across the state that are going on, but Cyber Patriot is kind of through the Air Force Association, the space association there. We're going to host this at four locations around the state and or they can do it at the school. So we're going to try to empower the schools to offer this. And then we're running a Gen cyber camp, which is really cool. The first time the University of Arizona has run one in probably 10 or 15 years. So we're gonna host up 40 middle school students. We're working on that. We had the application open for a week, and we had 60 students already register for it. So we have 40 slots, 60 students. So we have a pretty big wait list, but it just shows the excitement that's out of there. So that's funded through the NSA, kind of, but through the federal funds, and we still have the funds, so that's another exciting thing, but we're trying to figure out, like, how do we institutionalize that? Because obviously the demand is there, and Grand Canyon University is running one as well for high school students, but I'm not quite sure what those dates involve. Are. So I know that was a ton of information. Hopefully I did well. Let me jump over to the chat real quick. You

did a good job. Short period of time, but go ahead, Paul. Any questions for Paul? Comments,

okay, yep. So Lucy, I got your information. Let me grab your connection. I'll send you an email right after this.

I was wondering, did you pitch the cybersecurity camp to anyone here in Tucson, or you just went straight to Basha for a pilot? I love that you were able to implement a successful high school pilot as a club so that it didn't kind of disrupt, you know, teacher and all that stuff, but it and it was well received. I'm just curious why a U of A would have gone to Phoenix as opposed to maybe around Tucson first. Yep,

and that's an excellent question. Um, so we've been partnering with bachelor High School for almost five years now. They have the the most expansive cyber security program in the state and almost in the nation. They are a pathway school for our program already, so, so that's kind of it was the easy button. It was one of those things where we went to them and said, Hey, we thought we would get like, 10 students and like, now it was kind of like, oh, we really need to work on this. So we're working with Vail school district as well, with Melissa Matthias. We already did the paperwork for the memorandum of understanding. So that's I meet with our lawyers Tuesday. So that's going to be the next thing. And then I'm trying to set up a meeting with Sunnyside High School and Sunnyside school district as well. So we're open to partnering with anybody. It's really just trying to find the champion. So one like anything in K 12 space. If you don't have a champion to kind of carry that forward, it's not in this is a national problem. This isn't like just an Arizona thing. So as long as we have a champion that's willing to kind of carry that forward, we'll come in and we'll mentor. We'll give them every resource that they possibly need to be able to do that. Will promote, will support, but it has to be run by the school within that school district. So any of these camps, like CyberPatriot, if you have a teacher that's like, hey, I want to do that. I will give them every material. It's literally, here's a slide. Say this. Do this. Show them this. Click here. Go over here. So even if a teacher doesn't have the cybersecurity background, it is really accessible to do that. So and

just the format of the bashes, was it like a 10 week program where you guys supported once a week? Or was it just, here's information? Just complete it. We'll see you in six weeks. Yeah. So sorry, if Paul. And then that's the last this is for Paul Ross, who's got his hand up. My bad.

Oh, okay, yeah, I'll jump right over to you, Paul here in a second. Too many Pauls, it's the great game, but we gotta, we gotta deal with it. Um, so how this kind of worked is, in the fall, we put them in what's called the Google Cyber Security Professional Certificate. So that's something that's provided through Coursera as an asynchronous thing. We put them in that certificate because we have free access to it and manage it. And then we let the teachers manage that piece. So that's the fall piece. In the spring, we provided them with our risk the undergraduate risk management modules, going through all of the materials, all of my lectures, we recorded everything. Provide them with resources and activities. The teachers then develop or deliver that to the students as well, and then that's when they really get handed off to the district. IT personnel to work on the actual hands on assessment piece. So it builds foundations with the certificate, and then it leads into more advanced knowledge. And then they go in and do the hands on which starts to develop their analysis, research, presentation skills, technical writing and that kind of stuff. So it is really, in a year, a pretty comprehensive thing. And I mean, it's, it's not for the faint of heart. I am truly excited when I saw nearly 60 students out of the 100 that started actually completing everything. And, like, we want more. How do we do this? And now we're looking at, we have freshmen that are doing this. Like, I think 10 of those are freshmen. Like, now what do we do with them for the next three years? It would be very disappointing if a freshman came in super excited, and then, like, we don't do anything for another three years. So now we really got to figure out, how do we engage them? How do we make this into something else? So we're looking at expanding it to a two year program where the year one students become peer mentors for the or, I'm sorry, people that complete the year one become mentors for the New Year one cohort that's coming through. And then how do we build that into clubs and capture the flags and putting them out in the community to do, like security awareness training, and it's exciting. So happy to chat more. Paul,

yeah, one of my quick questions, I agree with you, with when it comes to you got to have that school champion. If you don't have the champion, it's not going to fly. Have you considered trying to run something? To run? Recruit those champions across the different schools, but looking at it from like a three point piece, and that is, you need the teacher champion. You need somebody from administration, whether it's at a principal or a system principal, and then you need somebody from the IT staff, because I've seen lots of schools try to get something up and running because there's a teacher who has got some passion for it, but they don't have the administrative or the technical support on their own campuses, because there is that that piece is so critical to make it successful as well. So have you looked at something like that? Because it seems like there's a lot of interest out there, but trying to target and get into those the right buckets, get the right people on the bus, so to speak. That's actually probably the hardest thing. Yeah,

so 100% appreciate that. So my colleague, who is not here today is name is Rob Hannah Michael. So he's a transplant from South Dakota, Dakota State University. He was a K 12 computer science teacher, worked at the district, it office worked at on an administrative level before you became a faculty member. So 100% with that piece, where we've worked with things where you do have that passionate teacher, and we're like, well, that's great. What does your district say? Right? Like, if you don't have that administrative buy in, it's not going to go anywhere. And then the student or the teacher, even if they try to bootstrap, it is going to get burnt out, and then it's going to fall apart. Same thing with the access piece. It's not so much the IT person. They need to be an advocate for this to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're going to let a 14 year old do what on my network? So how do we isolate that network? How do we provide them with look, we understand what you're saying. We can still do this while maintaining your security. We're not trying to, like, degrade the situation, but absolutely, anytime we get a passionate person from one of those three levels or from the external parent partner, that's also, I would say, a fourth leg of that stool. Is if you don't have parent engagement or industry partnership or whatever, that's where we want to make sure that the ecosystem is right, and we are very cautious when we go out to conferences and we present on this is like, look, this district is the perfect storm of everything. Everybody is on board with this. They are passionate. They're also starting the semiconductor program for high school students in Arizona as part of the chips act like they're they're on board, like everybody's working in the same direction. They're like, we're going to make this happen that does not happen like magically in other districts. So when we have those initial conversations, we're very upfront. To be like, Look, we need to have a conversation with your administrator. Appreciate your passion, because we're actually working with somebody out of New York, and because we met at a conference, and she's like, I can't get my district to do any of these things. Like, how do we do this? So what we're trying to do with that teacher, specifically, and we'll do this in Arizona too, is give them the talking points. This is how we were able to do it. This is why this is important. But we're talking years to decades. This isn't like fast moving, which is unfortunate, because with like, artificial intelligence is another perfect example. In K 12, there's districts that are like, we will not have this on our campus. We're not even going to touch it. It's like, but aren't students using their phones and accessing it anyways? Like, how do we train them to use it effectively and safely, instead of just we're not even going to deal with this situation right now. So

it sounds like what you need is like a program playbook that breaks it all down. But they'd like to see programs. They'd like to see playbooks. You put the two together, you might have the right formula. But thanks, Paul, thanks for sharing, and I'm sure we'll have more discussions.

And Christy, you have a question or comment?

Yeah, I have a question. So I Paul, I work up in you have pi County. I'm the lead on the Digital Equity plan up here. And we have a lot of really rural, rural students and a lot of students who are low income, and I'm listening about your cyber security camps. Are there? Are there scholarship or granting opportunities so some of those kids can participate, even though their schools are not going to have the capacity for your programming?

Yeah. So that's one of the things we're also very cognizant about. So all of the camps that we're running are free. We either fund the school to offer it, we support in some way, shape or form, technology, like for Cyber Patriot, is an issue. I mean, one, you can't do it on a Chromebook because you need to actually install virtualization software. So that's a barrier, right? Like, I mean, if schools, we're struggling to get to one to one for everybody with even just a Chromebook. Now we want them to have an actual laptop computer to be able to kind of do this kind of work. So a couple of initiatives that we're working on and trying to do that is one, identify who wants to participate, whether that's a student, whether that's something else. That's why those Capture the Flag events that I mentioned. That are going to be fully remote. It's web browser based. So as long as they can access a browser, they can play along, they can participate, they can go through that work. And we're going to have zoom links available. So if they want to reach out and ask questions, we'll be there to kind of help guide through that process. And I understand that zoom and connectivity is where this group is coming from. So they may not have that we have to meet them at least where there are now, and try to bridge that gap and then work to fill those resources there. So if you want to reach out through my email in the chat, if you just want to have a conversation, say, hey, this teacher in this school would like to have a conversation, we have an amazing team. I love that rob my partner, is here because he's a passionate person, and we just want to make sure that we're connecting with the right people and supporting if we can, but then also being realistic. We don't want to become a huge burden on either the teacher or the students, but we want to make sure that they're aware of the opportunities. And there's a because there's a full high school, it's through the University of Alabama, Huntsville. It's called the ring regions, investing in the next generation of cyber professionals. It is a fully online cyber security program. Depends on the school if they'll give credit or not, but they can participate in that for free as well. So it's all online. It's a really, really solid program. So the school can actually just pull that entire resource package in and offer it the they have like, four or five teachers that are now full of that, and go from there. So does that, Christy, I'm sorry, and then Paul, I'll get your question. Christy, does that help?

Yeah, that's really helpful. And I will reach out to you. I'm also going to we have a new county school superintendent, also reach out to him, and we also have a county school librarian that I can bring the conversation to as well. Okay, so thank you. Yep, and

we work with the center of future of Arizona, as well as kind of building that network and those connections out. Like I said this, this isn't University of Arizona. We need to connect with all of our partners who's getting there. We work with Manny Felix and the Arizona Cyber Security Initiative, because they do camps all over the state, and they're actually moving out into California as well, because we are losing Yuma students out to California and really good talent, because we don't focus on, like the Yuma area, and California is like 10 miles away, right? 15 miles whatever it is, residential camps. So yes, we would love to, like I said, this is the first time we've run Gen cyber camp in 15 ish years. Rob has been part of that program for 10 years, I think. Plus, at Dakota state, they run the largest residential camp in the country every single year. So we're hoping that, based on his experience based on that, we would love to have students come to campus, spend a week with us, which then they're engaging with the campus community. They're seeing what's going on. They're like, and it doesn't have to be that they come to the University of Arizona, but some students, like I grew up in rural Wisconsin, like I had no idea what a campus was like. There is no reason, based on where I grew up, living in poverty level, that I should be giving these talks and like working in this work and being a university faculty member, it just it shouldn't have happened. But here we are. So I think that's the idea of connecting these students, seeing what those possibilities are, and then being able to move forward. So since this was our first camp, we're not even allowed to do that, so we have to run one successful camp, and then we'll be able to start looking at those residential camps. So we're with us and our partners. We're taking a kind of a two pronged approach. One, we would like to bring them to these campuses to be able to do this work, but we're also doing local mentorship training programs. So those rural areas that are partnering with them, we can train them, and then they can host the camps. Well, whatever the agency or the organization is, we'll still pay for that, but they're there, so we don't have to pay for travel. We just have somebody that's embedded in that community, that knows the community, that comes from the community, and now we're getting some real relationships and communication for what's going on. So we're trying to do a lot.

So Paul, we're way past time. I appreciate you hanging in here. So one of the things that you and I think chatted about a long time ago, and we don't have time to really get into it today, is the whole issue of so we have all these new people who are getting new computers, getting internet for the first time, and all those kinds of things. And I know that people are starting to do some cyber safety workshops, but cyber security is much bigger than that, and with all the threats that are out there, and you were just talking about, for example, with Chrome browser, and updating your Chrome browser, and updating your your systems and making sure that you're up to date. You know, I always use the example, if you told people, Look, you got to change the password on your router, and they go, What the heck is a router? And how would I go about changing and why would I want to do that? And so there's a lot more. More to cyber security than just how to remain safe online. And so there's a real need, in my opinion, to address that issue of, how are we going to help people to understand that and where, where and how do we provide the technical support to people who go I have no clue. I think I told you some time ago that I created a Cyber Security Alliance, and one of the things we talked about, so here's the basics of cyber security. We did a great work website about that, but we also started to develop a database of people who they could we were focused on the small business community, but we were trying to say, look, if we've convinced you that you need do something, but you don't have the not the time or the knowledge to do that, here's consultants that you can contact to be able to do that. And I think we're going to need to do the same kind of thing, and probably at no cost or low cost, to be able to address those more comprehensive cyber security needs, and so part of that is, can, will we be able to use your students again? We don't have a lot of time to get into that today, but I, in my opinion, that's a really critical issue that I'm not sure we've come to grips with as we talk about Digital Equity and Digital Inclusion. Yeah,

I 100% agree. We can have that conversation or work with it. Our goal is it really comes down to liability, if we have our students doing something and they do something wrong, liable for that. So that's where the university perspective is, is to make sure that we're not putting ourselves or our students at risk before they even get out into the workforce. We don't want to go through that process. But yeah, we could definitely talk about it. 100% agree.

So yeah, we, I don't know where, how we do that. I talked to Ryan a long time ago about about partnering with them, but I do think we need a cyber security strategy, not cyber safety. Well, cyber safety and cyber security, and people are pretty passionate about that. We need to recognize that there's both. Is the cyber safety, but also the whole cyber security thing, which is, as you well know, is becoming more and more of an issue every day. And we will be having ash coming sometime in the next couple of weeks. I know, I believe he is a tribal I mean, trial going on today, but we definitely want to talk about AI and how, of course, how AI fits into all the cyber security issues. So I think we need to have further discussion about that.

Sounds good. Yep, I appreciate you. All's time and Lucy, I got your email, so I'll follow up with you. I got to jump on the road to get to

Thanks, Paul. Really appreciate it. Good job. Take care. Okay, I think we're done for today. Anybody I'm going to stop recording, and if anybody wants to keep it some more, and if not.