NICE Conference and Expo, June 6-8, 2022

 The Elevator Pitch

“One cannot educate every 

governor, senator, cabinet 

secretary, or public administrator 

on the ins and outs of 

cybersecurity—but one can take 

real steps to ensure that members 

of their staff have received a 

basic education in the topics most 

critical to their position.”

 Background 

The Incorporating Cybersecurity into a Public 

Service Education Project Team was launched by 

the Transform Learning Working Group of the NICE 

Community Coordinating Council in January of 

2022. The purpose of the project team was to 

address Objective 2.2 of the NICE Implementation 

Plan: “Advocate for multidisciplinary approaches 

that integrate cybersecurity across varied curricula 

that support diverse learners from a variety of 

backgrounds and experiences.”

During the project team’s first sprint it worked to 

connect more than 600 programs belonging to two 

partner organizations. This brief describes the 

team’s partners on this task and their activity.

The Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, 

and Administration (NASPAA) is an international 

association of more than 300 institutional member 

schools that award degrees in Public Policy, Public 

Administration, Public Affairs, Non-Profits, and 

closely related fields of study. Programs are 

accredited at the Master level and graduates of 

NASPAA programs are everywhere from state, 

local, tribal, and territorial governments to 

presidentially appointed and congressionally 

approved positions in the Cybersecurity & 

Infrastructure Security Agency, Department of 

Homeland Security, and Department of Defense. 

The National Centers of Academic Excellence in 

Cybersecurity (NCAE-C) program recognizes 

academic departments or research centers at more 

than 300 institutions in the United States, with 

designations in Cyber Defense (CAE-CD), Cyber 

Research (CAE- R), and Cyber Operations (CAE-CO).

As part of their designation, CAE schools are also 

required to integrate Cybersecurity topics in 

additional disciplines within the school. The NCAEC is managed by the Program Office at the National 

Security Agency.

 Getting Involved 

The project team is about to begin its second sixmonth sprint and is looking for cybersecurity case 

studies that may be published to NASPAA’s 

publicases.org. If you want to get involved or have 

case studies to share, please contact the team’s 

government co-chair at andrew.artz@nist.gov.

Program Introductions

NASPAA & NCAE-C

A deliverable of the Incorporating 

Cybersecurity into a Public Service 

Education Project Team
 Situation, Task, Action, Result (STAR)

The project team’s initial sprint ran from January to 

June of 2022. During its initial sprint the project 

team realized it had much it wanted to accomplish 

and very little time to do so. It was noted that the 

team was focused on macro-level issues and its 

small, centralized team of volunteers limited its 

ability to deeply explore the nuanced challenges 

and opportunities of incorporating cybersecurity 

across more than 300 NASPAA programs. 

To counter its limitations the team leveraged its 

partnerships in academia, government, and 

NASPAA to seed local partnerships on campuses 

around the country and introduce graduate 

research opportunities at Carnegie Melon’s Heinz 

College of Information Systems and Public Policy.

Through Stacy Drudy, Director of Innovative 

Teaching and Learning, and Data Center Director at 

NASPAA; and Karen Leuschner, Cyber Defense 

Program Manager at the NCAE-C, the project team 

developed a six-page document that both 

organizations agreed to share and promote with all

their programs. The document introduces the 

organizations to one another and provides “ice 

breakers” for potential collaboration. Seeding local 

collaborations encourages “bottom-up” 

approaches to Objective 2.2 while the project team 

to continue its own “top-down” approaches. 

Through project co-chair Randy Trzeciak, Program 

Director of the Heinz College’s MS Information 

Security Policy & Management, Technical Director 

CERT Division of the Software Engineering Institute, 

the team introduced a graduate research project 

which will explore cybersecurity curriculum already 

taught in NASPAA programs and how it maps to 

existing frameworks and knowledge units

The project team is still very young, so it has not 

yet taken quantitative or qualitative measurements 

of its success, however, the team has stated that its 

goal is not to simply create one more elective 

course in cybersecurity. The project team sees 

touch points to cybersecurity across all facets of a 

program. Consider the following illustrations:

• CAE and NASPAA programs collaborating to map

where aspects of foundational knowledge units

(NCAE-CD KUs) are already being taught in NASPAA 

programs, or how current curricula maps to work 

roles in the NICE Framework.

• An instructor in a course on government 

procurement or city management responds to a

discussion post asking how the CIA triad factor into 

students’ proposals to purchase a new web service 

or provide open public data. 

• Faculty, staff, or administrators supporting 

NASPAA programs are regularly invited to 

participate in or observe simulation style 

workshops based on real-world cyber events—like 

the workshops recently held at the American 

Society for Public Administration’s 2022 

conference. 

NICE Conference and Expo, June 6-8, 2022