Security Management of Collective Decision Making in Academia in Post-Pandemic Period

Abstract

Under the pressure of sanitary restrictions, the potential of information technologies available to the academic communities for over a dozen years, but not used for various reasons, is released. As a specific case of this trend, a migration from brick-and-mortar voting towards the remote voting by electronic means may intensify in the post-pandemic period at universities. This phenomenon requires an in-depth analysis, the aim of which is to facilitate the management of academic units to choose optimal solutions in the coming years, when such decisions can be made without time pressure and invasive sanitary restrictions. In the process of electronic remote voting, security is a key requirement, which has a number of various attributes: authenticity, correctness, anonymity, verifiability, receipt-freeness, availability. In response to these, to some extent contradictory, requirements, the world of science has been developing protocols and systems based on cryptographic formalisms for years. This article explains the main challenges related to security of remote electronic voting, from which even advanced solutions implemented in academic practice are not free.