Luke: [00:00:00] You’re listening to a new episode of The Brave Technologist. While we’re in Nevada for the Rare Evo conference in Las Vegas, we had a chance to speak with Cisco Aguilar, who serves as a Nevada’s Secretary of State. As secretary, he’s focused on three major principles: modernization, innovation, and transparency.

With the understanding of the office as a technology company, he has spearheaded two major projects to overhaul the state’s business licensing and election systems, and he seeks to make Nevada the best place in the country to do business. In this episode, we discussed what it means to run a Secretary of State’s office like a technology company, how Nevada’s office stayed untouched during one of the biggest cyber attacks the country’s ever seen, and why centralizing statewide voter data doesn’t have to mean less privacy or security.

And now for this week’s episode of The Brave Technologist.

​

Luke: Cisco, welcome to Brave Technologist. How you doing?

Cisco: Good. Thanks for having me.

Luke: Yeah, thanks for coming. It’s an honor to be here. It’s the first time I’ve had a secretary of state on the podcast. So, much appreciate you, making the time for this.

and speaking of which, I mean, you know, we’re here at Rare Evo. You’ve described the kinda the secretary of state’s office as essentially a technology [00:01:00] company. that’s pretty unconventional framing for a government role. Where did that mindset come from, and what resistance did you hit when you kinda brought it in?

Cisco: Yeah, no, I come from the private sector. This is my first elected office. Okay. I never intended to be in elected office, but I really got fired up on a couple of situation. The Secretary of State’s office has three responsibilities. One is I’m the chief elections officer, so I oversee the elections in the state of Nevada, and Nevada being a battleground state- every eyeball is on us.

Yeah. We get scrutinized for everything we do, and technology’s a big part of it. The transparency piece is a big part of it. The second is business and corporate filings. we’re the front doorstep for business in Nevada, and we have to be really good about what we do and how we do it, because we want people to be here.

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: And third is, I do securities regulations. So I need to be available to help entrepreneurs be able to raise the capital to build their companies.

Luke: Yeah. Well, it’s a good, good, combination for this conference, I think. Yeah.

Cisco: So, and that’s why I say, like, everything we do in the Secretary of State’s office is based off technology.

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: If we have great [00:02:00] technology, we’re gonna have good services. If we have bad technology, we’re not gonna do what we should be doing for Nevada taxpayers.

Luke: That’s a healthy approach. I wish more people had that. Nevada used to have kind of separate voter systems for every county.

now it’s one statewide system with, top-tier cybersecurity. What was the hardest part of that switch?

Cisco: Getting people who have been doing the job for 20 years to recognize that we’re about to do something very different. And so, and one of it was, really, it was around cybersecurity.

Luke: Uh-huh.

Cisco: Having our 17 counties have 17 different systems, 17 different processes, but the surprising thing is some of the counties, the vendor no longer existed.

Luke: Oh, wow.

Cisco: So they didn’t get the updates, they didn’t get the upgrades. They were vulnerable to potential attacks, and why that is so scary in Nevada is because for the fact that we’re a battleground state.

Right. We are, the road to the White House runs through Nevada.

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: And if somebody’s gonna, a foreign adversary’s gonna look at a community to attack, they’re gonna come to Nevada, because what’s happened in Nevada is gonna happen in the rest of the country.

Luke: And it seems like it’s been, like, [00:03:00] voter security and, you know, integrity on elections has been a really hot button issue in the past several cycles at, at least.

Cisco: Ever since the 2020 election. Yeah. And elections administrators always have done the same thing for election cycle after election cycle. 2020 disrupted that.

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: And now we have to be better at what we do. I say this all the time, is Nevada runs some of the most safest, secure, and accessible elections in the country, and that’s based off the technology and the systems we’re using.

Luke: I can imagine, , getting all, migrating from all of the system like you just laid out must be a severe challenge and probably a lot of personalities involved. A- and a lot of, you know, i- entrenched personalities, I would imagine. but were there people that were excited for that, though?

Cisco: Absolutely. Yeah. It’s, you know, I think it’s more of a generational thing.

Luke: Okay.

Cisco: The,, older generation likes to do things the way they’ve always done them, not as technical. Avoid technology just because they don’t, it’s not that they don’t like it, it’s just they don’t understand it.

Luke: Sure.

Cisco: And they’re afraid to take [00:04:00] the time to actually learn it.

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: The younger leaders were like, “Hey, let’s go. I think this can improve our efficiencies. It can improve our transparency. If we have greater transparency, we’re gonna have greater trust with the public. And if the public has trust, they’re gonna participate, and that’s what we want.”

Luke: Yeah.

​

Luke: That makes a lot of sense.

I mean, like, are, are there other states that have, kind of reached out to you guys about this process to kinda learn from that?

Cisco: It was actually a funny thing is we had a very limited time to implement this new system, and governments are not good at system implementation. And we knew we needed to have it done before the November ‘24 general [00:05:00] election.

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: Because it was a presidential election, it was an important election. Huge. And so we had literally 14 months to get it done.

Luke: Wow.

Cisco: What scared me is the state of Oregon was already at that point in year four of the same implementation of the same system.

Luke: Wow.

Cisco: And I thought, “This is crazy.” But we, we were very focused.

We made sure we hired the right people. We had the right team. And it was funny, there’s a publication called ProPublica-

Luke: Uh-huh …

Cisco: which does investigative reporting. Yeah. And they heard about our system, and they came and did an investigation into the implementation because they’re like, “This is way too fast for government.”

Luke: Right. Right.

Cisco: And when I got wind of this story, I went to the governor, told him about it, made him aware, and then when the l- story came out the Saturday before the Tuesday election in ‘24, I sent it to him and he called me and he said, “Hey, isn’t it surprising that government actually got something done?”

In the timeframe that we said we would and under budget.

Luke: So. Wow, that’s amazing. I mean, like, it’s really… I- is it about the team? Is it about the process? It’s about- Is it about a little bit of [00:06:00] both?

Cisco: It’s a little bit of both. Yeah. And also having a working relationship with your technology, your vendor- Yeah

developer. Yeah. Is understanding what you really need and being very clear about it, but also, too, working with them to fix the system to get it to where you exactly want it.

Luke: Yeah. Well, a- and speaking of that, I mean, like, you know, when, when Nevada got hit with one of the biggest cyberattacks the country’s seen, maybe we can unpack what that was a little bit, but, your office was untouched.

What did you guys do differently?

Cisco: So it was the fact that we developed that new system. Yeah. As we were developing that new system, we started to notice some inconsistencies that were happening, and we thought, “Okay, this is potentially a cybersecurity issue. Somebody’s trying to penetrate the system.”

We made a phone call to the CISA organization under federal government under the Biden administration. We didn’t get the support that we really thought we should have gotten.

Luke: Uh-huh.

Cisco: And so I thought, you know what? I had a boss, a previous boss, who said, “If you wanna get something done right, you have to do it yourself.”

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: And I went to the team and I said, “We cannot depend on the federal government to help us in this situation. We have to be able to do it, and we have to get the [00:07:00] smartest people here to help us build in those protections and understand what is…” Then I went out there to the private sector and I said, “Who is the best at this, and how do we get them involved in the process?”

And they came in early. They helped us build those protections. They helped us build the systems. They helped us build the monitoring. And when the cyberattack hit Nevada- We were prepared and we were protected because we had the air gaps in place, we had the duplication of our systems, you know, in a safe, secure environment that if we needed to, we could have run an election during this cyberattack and the voter wouldn’t have known the difference.

Wow. And it would’ve been safe and secure.

Luke: That’s awesome. So, so you guys kind of effectively made a call to action in the private sector, right?

Cisco: Early on.

Luke: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did Nevada businesses step up in trying to help? Or were businesses kind of from all over the country?

Cisco: Just all over the country. That’s awesome. We just went and found who’s the best at what they do, and, you know, my IT team is very security-focused. Yeah. So they already had an idea what they wanted.

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: We took that plan to the rest of the development team and the rest of the i- implementation team, and everybody was like, “This is great.

Let’s go. Let’s [00:08:00] roll.” And The good part is we had the resources to do it. That’s awesome. And not all states have those resources, but we made a case to the legislature. It was really funny. We were in a finance committee here. I was presenting my budget, and they said, “What is your biggest fear?” And I said, “Cybersecurity.”

Luke: Wow. Wow.

Cisco: And this was before the attack. Yeah. And so, you know, I’d… Look, you never want to be proven right, especially in that type of situation, but I’m glad my team was ready to go.

Luke: What was the attack? I mean, like, can, can you unpack that a little

Cisco: bit? Yeah, it’s a little bit complicated because, again, it was a f- a foreign adversary who had come in.

Okay. Or a foreign organization.

Luke: Yeah, yeah.

Cisco: Sure. Who just penetrated the system- Uh-huh An error- Yeah … got into the middle of it and started to lock it down incrementally.

Luke: Okay, interesting. So it- And- It was an outside, uh- Yes … adversary. Interesting.

Cisco: And they did send, you know, demands, and the state made a strategic decision not to meet those demands and- Yeah

slowly tried to take over the system.

Luke: Fascinating. Yeah, it’s just really interesting ‘cause people hear about these things framed a lot, but I feel like some people kinda question what, like how big of a threat those things actually [00:09:00] are. and, you guys, here you are, you’ve dealt with it firsthand, right?

Cisco: Well, we’re sitting in an environment that’s suffered a similar cyber attack probably a year before we did. Oh, yeah. And so it was in our mindset, and it was in our mind because if a business like this can take a hit like that and- Yeah … shut its operations, everybody’s susceptible.

Luke: Yeah, totally, totally. To me, it makes sense.

so you’re phasing out, the state’s old business filing system for a new one called Orion. What was broken, and- … what does this unlock, and what is Orion?

Cisco: So it’s a fascinating story. Uh, Orion Clemens was the first secretary of the territory in Nevada.

Luke: Okay.

Cisco: And Orion Clemens is Mark Twain’s brother.

Luke: Oh, okay.

Cisco: So both Mark Twain and Orion were in northern Nevada when the state was forming.

Luke: Interesting.

Cisco: Mark Twain had to leave because he participated in an illegal duel, and so he was gonna be convicted, and before he could get convicted, he left the state of Nevada.

Luke: Wow.

Cisco: But he was quite a character. His brother was the more focused, more diligent, the [00:10:00] more…

And we just thought out of honoring Nevada history, it’d be cool to call it Orion- I

Luke: love it.

Cisco: I love it … for many reasons. But the system was broken. When I took over as secretary, one of the reasons I ran for secretary of state is I’m a lawyer, I did corporate filings for my previous employer, and the month of February 2020, the system was completely down for the entire month.

Luke: Wow.

Cisco: What? And I thought, I started to go down a rabbit hole, and we’re the th- that system is the third-largest revenue generator in Nevada- Wow … for the general fund.

Luke: Wow.

Cisco: So every single incremental dollar we make is 99.99% profit. Hm. And you just thought, how could a state allow this to happen?

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: Second of all, all the small businesses that had to renew during that month are freaking out because they think they’re out of compliant.

Luke: Oh, yeah.

Cisco: They need to be compliant to apply for capital, to open bank accounts, to get debt or take on debt. It’s crazy that the state would allow this to happen. Right. And then they have to go hire a lawyer, spend money hiring a lawyer trying to figure out something that the state’s fault- Yeah … and should have a responsibility for.

So that’s where I first got into understanding what the Secretary of State’s office, and [00:11:00] then November 2020, I was standing in the hallway of the school I built, which is a workforce development school, and asking the kids if their parents had voted, and they all were saying, “No, no.” And I asked why, and my head just exploded.

Because if we’re really gonna change the way we operate as a state, we’re gonna really build a strong public education system, it takes the parents of kids in these schools voting.

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: And in my school, it’s 86% Latino, 10% Black. Our public school s- system here is the fifth largest in the country. Wow.

Majority minority.

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: And if we’re gonna change public education, these parents have to vote.

Luke: Yeah,

Cisco: yeah. And the Secretary of State’s office is in the middle of all that, and I thought, “I wanna do this.”

Luke: Awesome.

Cisco: So that’s how I got started.

Luke: Yeah, no, it’s great.

and I love this too that you’re a former entrepreneur and coming in from the business side, like, how does that shape how you think about red tape in government?

Cisco: So one, it’s frustrating. Yeah. Coming from the private sector and being able to respond quick and fast- Yeah

and to be able to go secure resources when you need them within moments, [00:12:00] for us, we have a legislative cycle that’s every other year.

Luke: Oh, okay.

Cisco: And so that’s your angel investor. That’s where you go to get capital.

Luke: Right.

Cisco: And having to wait a two-year period to go get the capital you need now-

Luke: Right …

Cisco: is extremely frustrating.

It’s frustrating, yeah. So you have to be smarter than the system. Yeah. And you have to think incrementally rather than just immediately.

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: But having, and walking into state government and talking to the frontline workers who are servicing the public and saying, “What is frustrating about your job?” And they have no clue that- The elected official is responsible for those services, and the elected official doesn’t always communicate with that frontlineworker to say, “Hey, here are the priorities.

Here is what we need to do. How do I make your job easier?” and to get them engaged in the process was critical to getting them to understand. And it’s just like when you’re doing a startup company or you’re running a large company, is you have to have your people understanding what the ultimate goal is.

Right. And you have to bring them into the decision-making process. If you don’t, you’re [00:13:00] not gonna get where you need to go. And so running it like a technology company puts accountability on me, it puts accountability on that frontline worker, but you have to have measurable results. You have to have metrics.

And so we get a daily report now to say, “This is how many people applied for a business entity. This is how many transactions were completed. This is how many transactions failed.” So we all are being held accountable for that process. Wow. But the interesting thing part is the frontline people know where the problems are.

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: And they can help you fix them.

Luke: Absolutely.

Cisco: And we’ve fixed over 1,000 bugs in the old system, which had an interesting effect. One, we got rid of our entire backlog that had existed in the office for almost seven years.

Luke: Oh my gosh.

Cisco: But importantly is when a system fails, people, the phone call or they go to another market.

Luke: Right. Right.

Cisco: And so we were losing significant revenue to Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, and I thought, “This is complete bullshit. We gotta fix this.”

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: And also our hold times were ov- about an hour and a half.

Luke: Oh my gosh.

Cisco: After we did all these fixes We are now down to about three to four minutes on average.

Wow,

Luke: that’s [00:14:00] huge.

Cisco: Immeasurable. And that’s great. And but, you know, it’s revenue’s coming back to the state-

Luke: Yeah …

Cisco: which then directly goes into our general fund to invest in other things across the state.

Luke: So, I mean, like, just from talking to you, I can… I feel like you’re energized and like, um, you know, uh, coming into the, from the, the private sector.

would you recommend for others that are, are maybe thinking about, going into the public sector to do it? Like, has this experience been fulfilling? Like, is it something that you recommend other, you know-

Cisco: Yeah, I think, look- …

Luke: people do more often?

Cisco: So, again, I had, you know, I had the opportunity to work for an amazing individual, Andre Agassi, and Stephanie Graf, and everything we did was with intention and purpose.

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: And Andre always said, “You have a responsibility to pay your community rent. You may not know what it is now, but sometime in the future you’re gonna have this duty and obligation.” my first obligation, I think, was my school. That’s really, I really thought as my purpose. But then when the opportunity came to run for Secretary of State, I thought, “Here’s a real opportunity to show how we can make a real difference, and how we can make government work for the [00:15:00] people.”

Mm-hmm. “And we can make it easier to do business in Nevada.” Mm-hmm. And then not all offices can have that mindset, because government does have certain responsibilities that cannot be run like a business- Right … or have the framework or somebody who’s run a business. But the Secretary of State’s office is really a business.

We are a commercial enterprise. We are competing for market share against Delaware, against Texas, against Montana, and so we do have to operate in a way that we look at it from a framework of who is the customer and how do we do better for them?

Luke: Awesome. No, it’s, super interesting. I mean, I think, uh, you know, some of our a- audience is kind of skeptical of centralized systems in- including governments.

Yeah. what do you say to someone who assumes statewide means less private and secure, not more?

Cisco: So I have that perspective, right? Yeah. You know, right now I’m in, because of the position I’m in with our elections- I’m in a battle with the federal government. Yeah. They want to come in and run our elections, but the Constitution’s very clear that states run elections.

Luke: Right.

Cisco: I don’t need them to build systems for me. Yeah. I need to build those systems for my constituents, and for [00:16:00] our voters, and for our taxpayers. But there are points where a statewide system can bring consistency across the process, which actually builds trust with the voter. And the fact that we can have consistence- consistent processes, consistent uniformity across all 17 counties helps build that trust.

But not only that, it’s getting real-time information to the voter in real time.

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: And l- our voting systems across this country, it’s very hard to get innovation and modernization because it’s hard to recruit vendors and entrepreneurs and thought leaders to get into the industry, because it’s a hard, hard industry.

Right. You’re constantly being attacked.

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: You’re constantly being sued. You have to have a superb comms team because you’re constantly having to defend against dis- and misinformation.

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: So an entrepreneur is like, “Heck no, I’m not going into that industry.”

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: So you kinda have to build it up. But again, that transparency piece is critical.

Because of that, we have to get real time in. We’re one of the first states that built a dashboard where a voter can go online and [00:17:00] see how many people voted in person, in which counties. They can see how many mail ballots have been received by the county, how many mail ballots have been processed by the county, how many ballots need signature here, which is a big security piece of it all.

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: So this information’s coming every six minutes. Wow. And it’s because we have that new system that gives me the data to be able to do that for the public.

Luke: And it sounds like, too, y- you, the, the impact is strong because, you know, the, the systems you are changing had been in place for many, many years.

Right. I think you were updating. So, so you feel confident in the longevity of the systems you guys are putting in place? And, like, how do you feel about how your legacy, like, will these systems still be in place years from now?

Cisco: Well, hopefully not. Yeah. Because of the fact that as soon as you start, there’s new technology, right?

Right. Right. You constantly have to be innovating.

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: You constantly be having to upgrade. And I think sometimes secretaries lose that perspective that they have to constantly be modernizing. Yeah. Because the technology is constantly changing. And being here at Rare Evo really gives you the mindset to understand what that future [00:18:00] technology looks like, and where it can start to be implemented across the government sector.

Luke: Yeah. Makes sense. I think, you know, we’ve been talking about, a little bit about, high value targets for bad actors, attacks, things like that, the domestic and foreign. how do you think privacy and data minimization- Like, how do you think about that when you’re centralizing that much sensitive citizen data into one system?

Cisco: It’s critical. Yeah. It’s everything.

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: given what we went through as a state, Nevadans are very sensitive about their personal information- Yeah … and how that information is stored.

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: And the fact, again, that Nevada is a battleground state, we are in the eye of foreign adversaries.

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: We have to step up our game, and we have to be critical about that protection.

And it’s not a Democrat or Republican issue.

Luke: No.

Cisco: You know, I am a Democrat.

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: And I went to a business group in Carson City and spoke to them, and it was majority Republicans, and somebody asked the question about the federal government has requested all the private information of every single voter in Nevada.

Wow. Social Security number, birthday, and driver’s license number. And my response was not, “No,” it was, “Tell me how [00:19:00] you’re going to use this information, how you’re going to store it, and who’s gonna ultimately be responsible for it?”

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: They didn’t answer those questions. Wow. They just filed a lawsuit against me for it.

Luke: Oh my God.

Cisco: But when I was explaining it to this group of citizens, they stood up and clapped. And I thought, “Holy cow.” They’re like, “Thank you for protecting my private information. When I signed, registered to vote, I agreed to give it to you, but I didn’t agree to have somebody else have that information sitting on another database.”

Right. “This is about my personal information, and that’s very sensitive.” And I thought, “Oh my gosh, this is not a political issue.” Right. This is a safety and security issue because private information is so valuable to bad actors.

Luke: Oh, absolutely, and I think especially now when you’re starting to see, it’s almost like a, becoming a requirement in some places for people to ID verify to even access the web, right?

Right. Like, uh, th- this chain of custody is super important around between personal information and, like, ways to, alternative ways to do it that don’t necessarily involve, you know, date, storing that data. Like-

Cisco: There… And there’s a huge balance between transparency of transactions, information, [00:20:00] information flow, but there’s also, too, a huge responsibility to protect private information when it can hurt somebody.

Luke: Right. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. so five years from now, what do you want people to say Nevada got right first?

Cisco: The fact that we understood what it takes to start a business, what it takes to deal with government, the fact that government- is there to help, but immediately gets out of the way when they’re becoming a burden.

Excellent. The other thing is bringing down cost, right? Like, I’ve been super focused on how do we give business owners greater flexibility to do what they do without government being in the way, but also how do we reduce that cost burden?

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: And so one thing, the reason why we’re here today is we want…

Right now, I pay Wells Fargo Bank 3% for every credit card charge.

Luke: Mm-hmm.

Cisco: And that burden goes onto that business owner.

Luke: Right.

Cisco: If I can figure out technology how to directly access the rails and reduce that fee and that burden on that business owner, they can use that revenue to invest back in their business.

I want people to say, “The Secretary of State’s [00:21:00] office knew what we were doing, understood how we were doing it, and did something about it.”

Luke: Awesome. That’s fantastic. so kind of in the race to innovate, what’s the conversation we aren’t having enough of?

Cisco: The investment it takes to have innovation and modernization and transparency.

Yeah. I think we need to do a better job of talking to governors and to state legislators who are appropriators to say, “Yes, it is a significant investment upfront, but the payout is gonna be significantly higher, and the satisfaction of the taxpayer is gonna be higher,” which means they will actually participate in government, they will trust government, and they will vote.

Luke: Awesome. Uh, was there anything we didn’t cover today that you want our audience to know about?

Cisco: I think it’s finding individuals who are willing to be innovative within government and supporting them because a lot of times I think we get clustered into, oh, you’re a bureaucrat, you’re not interested in change, and change management is hard among an employee base who’s been there for [00:22:00] decades.

Yeah. You know, I had one manager who told me, “I’ve been here for 20 years. You’ll be here for four, maybe eight years. I’m gonna be here after you leave.” Yeah. And I just thought, this mindset’s not gonna work.

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: Because what she’s doing is her holding down the employees that work for her- Right … who want to be motivated to do good things.

Luke: Yeah.

Cisco: And so we gotta support those individuals who are willing to take risk because a lot of political electeds don’t wanna take the risk ‘cause they wanna protect their seat. Right. Not me. I wanna take all the risks I can to do what… And I think the more risk we take, the more success we’re gonna have, and the more people will actually support you.

That’s awesome. Thank you.

Luke: Cisco, this has been a great conversation. Yeah. I appreciate it, man. Like, where can people find you if they wanna follow what you’ve been up to or, or reach out and say hi?

Cisco: Well, they can go to votesforcisco.com. Awesome. Or they can go to the official Secretary of State’s website, which is sos.nv.com.

Luke: Awesome. Well, Cisco, I appreciate you making the time. Yeah. It’s been a great conversation, and I’d love to have you back sometime to check in.

Cisco: Absolutely. Let me know. All right. Happy to do it.

Luke: Thanks, man.

Cisco: Appreciate it. Thank you.

Luke: [00:23:00] Thanks for listening to the Brave Technologist Podcast. To never miss an episode, make sure you hit follow in your podcast app. If you haven’t already made the switch to the Brave browser, you can download it for free today at brave.com and start using Brave Search, which enables you to search the web privately.

Brave also shields you from the ads, trackers, and other creepy stuff following you across the web.