Tag: Microsoft on the Issues

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There’s no doubt that most of us across the Puget Sound region are anxious to put the difficulties of 2020 behind us. As we approach the end of December, we look forward to the new year with a mixture of optimism and concern – optimism about spreading vaccines and concerns about the serious challenges that will unfortunately follow us into the first months of 2021. Covid-19 cases are on the rise and we feel it in our hospitals, our homes and in the local economy. Schools remain closed across most of Washington state, and despite the heroic work of educators, research tells us that distance learning can’t replace in-person instruction. This is creating a troubling learning loss. While these challenges are daunting, every day at Microsoft we see successes around the world that give us hope. We believe that our region can and should continue to pull together, support our neighbors and pursue a path that restarts the activities that fuel our economy, develop our children and enrich our daily lives.

As our community heads into the 10th month of Covid-related shutdowns and restrictions, we must move swiftly to reignite the local economy and ensure the safety of those who are key to the region’s recovery. As part of Microsoft’s continued commitment to the community that we call home, today we are announcing an additional commitment of more than $110 million towards our region’s recovery and, when the current Covid surge is under control, the safe reopening of its schools.

Here’s what we’re pledging today:

We will continue to support our hourly workers impacted by Covid-19. In March, we announced that we would continue to pay the hourly service providers on our campuses their regular pay even while their full services were not needed. Since that time, Microsoft has spent more than $110 million in Washington state to pay these wages.

As we head into the holidays, we want these workers and their families to know that we will continue to stand by their side. Today, we commit that we will continue to pay all our onsite vendor hourly service providers their regular pay until they can return to our campuses. In Puget Sound, this includes individuals who staff our lobbies, run our cafes, drive our shuttles, and support our on-site tech and audio-visual needs. We estimate that between Dec. 1, 2020 and Mar. 31, 2021, this will provide locally more than $50 million of additional wages.

We currently expect that it will take until early July 2021 for our campuses to return to a full presence. Regardless of the exact date, we will provide these onsite hourly workers their full wages until the date of their return.

We will continue to provide expanded support for nonprofits in Washington state. Even in the best of times, non-profit organizations play an indispensable role in supporting the social safety net and every other aspect of local communities in our state. The Covid crisis has made the role of these organizations even more critical. So far this year, Microsoft has provided more than $98 million of assistance to nonprofits in Washington state, including roughly $67 million in cash and $31 million in technology, in-kind support, special discounts and our Covid-19 response school lunch program.

We commit today that we will sustain this high level of support for nonprofits in our state. This will include ongoing cash grants and in-kind support. We currently project that we will provide roughly $60 million of additional support for local nonprofits between Dec. 1, 2020 and Jul. 15, 2021.

We will provide technology and in-kind support to help safely reopen the local schools in 2021. As the Covid crisis reaches into its 10th month, the toll on our state’s students far exceeds what most people anticipated when schools went to remote learning in April. The learning loss for students is substantial and now well-documented, with some groups losing a significant portion of a year’s progress in reading and math. School-based relationships promote the social and emotional well-being that are key to learning. The challenges for younger and lower-income students are especially pronounced.

As serious as the impact on students is the effect on many other parts of our communities. Covid-19 has provided a powerful reminder of the importance of our state’s teachers and the indispensable role that our schools play as central community institutions. They are essential in meeting family support, nutrition and childcare needs. The continuing closure of schools increasingly threatens the ability of working parents – especially mothers – to remain in the workforce.

At the same time these impacts have grown more dire, advances in understanding the science of Covid-19 have shown that it is possible, with the right precautions, to reopen schools safely, especially for the youngest learners. While this week with high infection rates is clearly not the right moment to restart in -person learning, the science now tells us that it is the right time to accelerate the planning for kindergarten through 5th Grade classes to reopen in February, if the correct safety measures are put in place. This requires a concerted effort across the community, and we will take new steps to help:

• Microsoft will provide a technology solution that will enable Washington state schools to better track and report Covid-19 related testing data within their district boundaries. This solution will be free and made available to all Washington state schools districts. This will ensure that schools can report to parents and teachers alike current information about testing and infections, thereby providing the transparency needed for the community to remain well-informed about critical health information.

  This solution builds on an application we created for the state of Washington to track PPE and beds for all 104 hospitals across the state. It also builds on our work with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the second largest school district in the country with approximately 700,000 students.

  While we help schools to reopen, we will also continue to support classes that interact online. We’re committed to providing the best possible products and support to help teachers engage with students remotely, including support and products that are available to all schools in Washington state.

• Microsoft will donate PPE and cleaning supplies to schools that need additional resources to reopen safely. It is critical that we reopen our schools in line with state guidelines. This will complement the state’s newly announced $3 million set-aside funds to implement health and safety protocols. Microsoft is prepared to donate PPE and cleaning supplies to help any school district in our state that needs additional supplies to re-open. These will be distributed through the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI).
• We support the Washington Department of Health’s updated Covid-19 guidelines for in-person learning announced by Governor Inslee on Dec. 16. These updated Covid-19 health standards for reopening schools keep pace with advances in the scientific understanding on case numbers, hospitalization rates and capacity, and Covid-19 case positivity test rates. We are also pleased to see the test positivity goals are now in line with the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO). These new goals also build on the learning from research at the Institute of Disease Modeling that show that schools can reopen safely, especially at the K-5 level, even when there are more positive tests in a community, if they follow the right precautions.
• We support prioritizing vaccines for teachers. We recognize that Governor Inslee and the leaders at the Department of Health will need to make the critical decisions about the precise order of who can be vaccinated and when. It remains vital to prioritize critical healthcare workers and other people who are especially vulnerable as the state distributes the first 400,000 vaccine doses in December. But we believe that if teachers, school administrators and staff in higher risk categories at the K-5 level were eligible to get a Covid vaccine in January, it would help these schools take a critical step towards reopening more quickly.

Today’s commitments bring Microsoft’s hourly worker commitment and local nonprofit support amounts to approximately $250 million in regional support – part of a decades-long commitment to our region that will continue. We know we are not alone in these efforts and we acknowledge the hard work and difficult choices made by parents and teachers, school administrators, and public health and other government officials.

In addition to continued action from our state’s elected officials, Congress needs to do its part. We will continue to advocate for a robust federal stimulus funding bill that includes initiatives such as wage relief and help for small businesses.

Washington state was one of the first to be impacted by Covid-19, and we acted quickly and decisively to respond. We now need to come together once again to chart a clear and unified recovery path that advances the shared economic opportunity and future of our region. We stand ready to partner with government leaders, school districts and the business community to start the new year with a clear plan of what we can do together.

Tags: COVID-19, education, Washington state

Human Rights Day, December 10, both honors the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on this day in 1948, and challenges all of us to live up to its highest aspirations. To help mark Human Rights Day 2020, we are pleased to release an update to the Microsoft Global Human Rights Statement, which we are publishing in 18 languages and dialects. First publicly released in 2012, and last updated in 2016, our Global Human Rights Statement is the main expression of how we understand and approach our human rights responsibilities.

At Microsoft, we’re guided by a simple but foundational belief: When your technology changes the world, you bear a responsibility to help address the world you have helped create. Over the past few decades, digital technology has brought sweeping changes to the ways that we work and live. Our company has been at the forefront of these changes, and we continue to push forward in our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Let me offer just two examples.

Global pandemic: Covid-19 has made this year unusually challenging for human rights worldwide. The Universal Declaration enshrines the rights to life, medical care, work and education. Millions of people have lost access to these rights and more because of the Covid-19 pandemic. We are saddened by all of the losses this year has brought. We have also been inspired to see that, thanks to advances in digital technology, more children can learn, more patients can receive adequate medical care, and more people can continue working than would have been imaginable even a decade ago.

Racial injustice: This past summer, global attention was directed to discrimination against Black and African American people in the US criminal legal system, including in policing, prosecution, sentencing and corrections. This results in many adverse human rights impacts, including the rights to equality; non-discrimination; life, liberty and security of person; freedom from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; equal protection of the law; and freedom of peaceful assembly and association. Worldwide, the issues of race, racism and criminal justice demonstrate how societies and the institutions intended to protect the rights of everyone can be fragile, and how they can be turned against vulnerable populations. Overall, this emphasizes the need for everyone, including leaders, businesses and individuals, to uphold behaviors and principles that protect and preserve the rights and freedoms of everyone in all societies. At Microsoft we are committed to advancing racial justice through public policy, by bringing to related challenges the power of data and digital technology in ways that increase transparency and accountability, and by focusing on diversity and inclusion in all our business practices and activities.

As part of Microsoft’s celebrations to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, in September Brad Smith, Microsoft’s President, once again had the chance to speak with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet. During their conversation, they discussed Covid-19’s impact on human rights, multilateralism, gender equality, climate change and the importance of digital connectivity. That conversation illustrates how the human rights framework can help everyone, including Microsoft, to navigate the complex challenges we face today and in the months and years ahead.

So, I invite you to read our new Global Human Rights Statement. Given the importance that we ascribe to respect for human rights in everything we do at Microsoft, we think it’s important to share with our customers and partners how we meet our commitment to respect human rights by engaging, learning from, and working with stakeholders, by advocating for rights-respecting public policies, and by demonstrating respect for human rights in our products, services and business practices.

May we emerge from this pandemic and confront the challenges ahead with an even greater respect for – and emphasis on – the value of human rights. And, as always, we welcome feedback as to how we at Microsoft can best live up to the aspirations that we have embraced.

Tags: COVID-19, human rights, International Human Rights Day, United Nations

Today marks the 15th anniversary of the United Nations’ International Anti-Corruption Day. On this day, Microsoft is proud to join with others from around the world to use our voice in support of International Anti-Corruption Day and to commit to take steps to reduce corruption.

In recognition of this important day, we are launching Microsoft Anti-Corruption Technology and Solutions (ACTS) to help empower governments and other stakeholders in their corruption fight. With this initiative, we hope to bend the curve of corruption by helping governments innovate with technology, expertise, and other resources.

The UN’s Anti-Corruption Day is observed each year to educate the public on the issue of corruption, to mobilize organizations and governments to work together to help eradicate it, and to highlight successful anti-corruption efforts and initiatives. As noted by the UN, corruption is a complex political, social, and economic phenomenon that is not unique to any single country or government. It undermines democratic institutions, slows economic growth, and contributes to governmental instability. And it is not a new problem. History is rife with examples across the centuries – just this last month, archeologists decoded an inscription by the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus to the people of the ancient city of Nicopolis ad Istrum suggesting gratitude and appreciation for a bribe.

The UN reports that the cost of corruption is more than $3.6 trillion dollars a year. This means that trillions of dollars every year are diverted from needed investments in education, health care, and critical infrastructure around the world. The impact of this is profound: Well-intentioned governments are thwarted in their ability to invest in basic humanitarian causes, and the deceptions caused by corruption subvert honest endeavors to foster inclusive and sustainable growth. Tragically, the people who end up suffering most are exactly the people who can afford it least.

The global events of this year have created a world particularly vulnerable to corruption. As noted by the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, “Corruption … is even more damaging in times of crisis – as the world is experiencing now with the Covid-19 pandemic. The response to the virus is creating new opportunities to exploit weak oversight and inadequate transparency, diverting funds away from people in their hour of greatest need.” Governments around the world are scrambling to address the Covid-19 pandemic – speeding to implement measures to address the health emergency and to provide resources for those hardest hit by the resulting economic downturn. These unprecedented investments, however, have exposed vulnerabilities in supply chains, procurement processes, and corruption controls.

This year’s Anti-Corruption Day theme, Recover with Integrity, serves as an important reminder of the critical importance of ensuring that pandemic resources reach their intended recipients. Unless we reduce corruption by exposing it through greater transparency and address it through more effective controls, recovery will be jeopardized.

The opportunity

At Microsoft, we believe corruption is an urgent global issue that can and must be solved. It will require a focused and comprehensive solution, and it will require governments, civil society, and the private sector all working together to promote transparency, create effective controls, and drive accountability. It is a daunting task, but never before has the world had the kinds of tools to fight corruption that exist today. We know, for instance, that data can illuminate hidden patterns and relationships to provide governments with better tools to ensure public moneys go to their intended purposes. Technology resources such as cloud computing, data visualization, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning provide powerful tools for governments and corporations to aggregate and analyze their enormous and complex datasets in the cloud, ferreting out corruption from the shadows where it lives, and even preventing corruption before it happens.

Our commitment

In the next decade, Microsoft ACTS will leverage the company’s investments in cloud computing, data visualization, AI, machine learning, and other emerging technologies to enhance transparency and to detect and deter corruption. We will endeavor to bring the most promising solutions to the broadest possible audience, using our partner networks, programs, and global employee base to scale solutions through careful consideration of their priorities, technical infrastructure, and capabilities.

Over the last six months, we have already begun to make investments in support of the Microsoft ACTS initiative, including a partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank to advance anti-corruption, transparency, and integrity objectives in Latin America and the Caribbean. Announced in July 2020, we are partnering with the IDB Transparency Fund to help bring greater transparency to the use of Covid-19 economic stimulus funds, building on the Mapa Inversiones platform developed by the IDB with Microsoft support and already adopted by many countries in the region. In the coming months and years, we look forward to additional partnerships, learning as we go, and empowering the work of others.

Microsoft is excited not only by the potential for technology to make positive changes on a long-standing societal problem that burdens the lives of citizens, distorts economic development, and erodes trust in public institutions, but also by the opportunity to partner with the international community in this fight.

We stand with the United Nations and the initiatives undertaken by governments around the world to stamp out corruption, and we look forward to working with governments, civil society, and others in the private sector to help us all recover with integrity.

Tags: ACTS, AI, Anti Corrution Technology and Solutions, COVID-19, International Anti-Corruption Day, United Nations

For an audio recording of the blog, listen below.

Three years ago, Microsoft President Brad Smith joined North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum in downtown Fargo to launch a new project called Microsoft TechSpark. This civic initiative was formed to foster economic impact and job creation through deep partnerships and collaboration. Corporate engagements with communities are nothing new, but the pivot here was to dive deep in just six specific regions, and focus on rural and remote communities, a change from often traditional outreach in larger, more urban metropolitans.

If we could find communities that embraced collaboration and would help test new resources and technologies, we knew we would learn a great deal. To gain a greater understanding of these differing ecosystems, we selected six regions with varying backgrounds, sizes, and demographics. We chose Cheyenne, Wyoming, Southern Virginia and central Washington State as they housed Microsoft data centers, while Fargo was a natural fit with an already large Microsoft employee campus. We wanted to engage a few regions, too, where we had little to no Microsoft presence. Given their strong engagement in our computer science education efforts, we also launched TechSpark in northeast Wisconsin, and then moved south to El Paso, Texas, before quickly adding in bordering Juarez, Mexico, to explore bi-national projects.

One essential ingredient in this plan was to find and hire TechSpark managers who lived in and knew the community. Some might have thought it would have been easier to send a team from company headquarters or rotated in visiting experts, but that’s not what we were going for. We’ve found that a member of the community who has resided in, worked alongside these neighbors, and previously led some of the region’s organizations, accelerates the work instantly with established credibility, presence, trust, network and awareness. This 24/7 approach to community engagement ensures constant communication, and many TechSpark ideas and approaches began with a conversation in the grocery store line or local coffee shop.

The team was charged with driving community and economic development through partnership, and delivery of Microsoft resources, keying in on a few pillars, including:

• Collaboration with local nonprofits, and empowering these community organizations to do more through tech enablement and digital transformation
• Driving opportunities in these regions for reskilling, or skilling that leads directly to employability in the community
• Connecting these local regions to high-speed internet and working with Microsoft’s Airband Initiative toward the goal of bringing broadband access to 3 million Americans living in unserved rural areas of the United States
• Empowering local partners to help build a more signature regional project, larger in scale and scope, and created for sustainability and longer-term impact

These signature projects have underscored our mission of growing each region’s plan organically and collaboratively. Several local leaders have shared the phrase, “Meet the community where they are.” Three years in, we’re proud to see these signature projects in planning and/or execution in all six of our TechSpark regions:

• Green Bay, Wisconsin celebrated the one-year anniversary of TitletownTech this summer. This partnership between Microsoft and the Green Bay Packers, has created an exciting venture lab and studio, across the street from iconic Lambeau Stadium, and is now shepherding more than 20 new startups into formation, with many beginning operations in Northeast Wisconsin.
• In North Dakota, a partnership with the innovative organization Emerging Prairie, has started the Grand Farm. This farm of the future will bring together students, teachers and industry to explore precision agriculture on a 60-acre experimental farm and test bed, alongside a digital academy and plug and play agriculture accelerator.
• Near our Boydton, Virginia, data center, and together with the MidAtlantic Broadband Corporation, the new Southern Virginia Innovation HUB will open its doors early next year (2021). The first new in the region for decades will house area nonprofits working to drive skilling, tech training and community partnerships.
• This fall, companies from both Mexico and the U.S. are coming together weekly, for our third cohort in the El Paso-Juarez Bridge Accelerator. This unique bi-national project has tapped the network of the Juarez Technology HUB and local partners to unite manufacturers, startups and other regional companies, sharing resources, best practices and training over a 12-week program. Already, the Bridge Accelerator’s first two cohorts have produced nearly $4 million in new sales, over $500,000 in new VC investment, and 110 new jobs.
• Cheyenne, Wyoming, is bringing together the great work of gener8tor to drive new business and startups in the state, and then leverage those new opportunities with the innovative curriculum of the Array School of Coding and the unique apprenticeship training of the Techtonic software and tech team.
• And in central Washington state, skilling through remote training has become a key mission of rural resilience, in partnership with area leaders like the Greater Wenatchee Tech Alliance, the Columbia Basin Foundation and Washington State University.

The daily connection and communication with these communities has informed our processes, priorities and programs. To summarize a few learnings and key takeaways across all regions:

• Partners before projects: The partner is key to any engagement. And finding the right partner first, and then building the plan and project second, is instrumental to every regional engagement. One can’t quickly recreate the relationships, know-how, infrastructure, network and knowledge that an established local partner brings. These organizations are already doing great work, and in some cases, are simply in need of additional resourcing, connections and a bright north star to dream bigger and accelerate their mission. Collectively, TechSpark has now partnered with 314 nonprofits across these regions, supporting more than 303,000 individuals.
• Back to school: We have found a strong common denominator in every rural or remote region with the local university, community or technical college. These higher education institutions often serve as the barometer for future employment and local workforce trends. Strong collaboration with these schools has produced new curriculum, planning and training opportunities like mentoring, apprenticeship and distance learning. From larger schools like the University of Texas at El Paso, North Dakota State University, the University of Wyoming and the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay to great local community colleges like Washington’s Big Bend, Southside Virginia and Wyoming’s Laramie, we’re finding engaged faculties and innovative administrations willing to collaborate to educate the next workforce. Together, these TechSpark partnerships have impacted 52,000 college students. Additionally, the team has worked to help bring the TEALS computer science teaching program into 135 high schools in the TechSpark regions, training over 150 high school teachers and 7,500 students.
• Connect: Access to high-speed internet is the electricity of this era, and in communities without strong internet, the struggle for business, education and health-care connections is exacerbated. Understanding the challenge with real numbers to identify demand, and incentivizing providers to move in, is a constant quest. From students doing homework in cars near new Wi-Fi hotspots, to agricultural projects growing through FarmBeats and data collection, the connection remains a foundational priority for economic and community growth. The work of Microsoft’s Airband team is helping to drive these projects across the globe, and finding partnership in states from Wyoming to Wisconsin, Texas to North Dakota.
• No cookie cutter: The varying backgrounds of these diverse regions has demanded regional approaches and individual attention. As we began to work to land AI for Good grants in each community, we quickly learned that a small nonprofit organization with a staff of one or two may not have the bandwidth to quickly absorb and implement an AI project. A flexible toolkit, with resources to help enable technology, is essential and must be inventoried uniquely by each region. With the necessary support, TechSpark has delivered 14 AI for Good grants across these regions. As well, the continuing work with local partners, has delivered skills training and a path to employability, for over 54,000 individuals in these TechSpark communities.
• Multiply: As the TechSpark program moves into year four, the ability to sustain these efforts and inspire replication becomes paramount. Our ability to multiply seed funding has become a metric across all these regions with a minimum goal of 3X. If we can help serve as a catalyst for other local and national partners, to help support a regional nonprofit, we’re a step closer to long-term sustainment. This work has already secured an additional $25m in funding from other partners (local and national) in addition to our TechSpark support, a 4X multiplier. Additionally, this effort underscores our hope for TechSpark-like projects to spring up in other communities across the globe. Providing a toolbox of best practices and lessons learned will spur other regions to scale through partnership.
• More alike than different: As much as we focus on differences between rural and urban, we are often struck by the greater array of similarities we all share. Regardless of the region’s population, we’ve witnessed the same hope shared by many; to provide for and educate their family, leave behind a stronger community, and give their children a better future. Likewise, we are hearing from many young people and new graduates, who express an eagerness to return to their roots, find a home near extended family, and continue the community building of their parents. Many may leave for school or adventure, but that instinctual path back to the hometown is strong, if only they can find the workplace opportunity.

The pandemic has caused many to push a reset button, as we have heard daily from local nonprofits and small businesses, struggling for survival. We’ve been able to support over 100,000 individuals in these regions through Covid-19 relief projects and, now more than ever, the work is critical to expand these local recovery and rebuilding efforts.

After three years, it is clear to us that no one organization, public or private, corporate or nonprofit, can transform these challenges alone. It is also clear that the desire to build up these ecosystems, digitally enable local businesses, provide skills for 21st-century jobs and redistribute opportunity is at the forefront for community leaders at all levels. This mission transcends political stripes across the spectrum.

The reception from these communities continues to be both welcoming and beyond appreciative. We look forward to this ongoing learning, community engagement and economic development as the spark started three years ago in Fargo continues to light.

Mike Egan is the Senior Director of TechSpark for Microsoft. Mike began his career picking raspberries in the fields of his hometown Puyallup, Washington, and working at the State Fair.

Tags: Airband initiative, Bridge Accelerator, El Paso, Microsoft TechSpark

Our public sector and enterprise customers regularly need to move their data between countries, regions and continents. Today, we’re announcing new protections for our public sector and enterprise customers who need to move their data from the European Union, including a contractual commitment to challenge government requests for data and a monetary commitment to show our conviction. Microsoft is the first company to provide these commitments in response to last week’s clear guidance from data protection regulators in the European Union.

Every day, our customers move data through their global networks to serve their clients, work with suppliers or partners, and manage payroll for their global workforce. These cross-border data transfers have been the subject of recent litigation and regulatory action including a ruling earlier this year from the Court of Justice for the European Union and draft recommendations issued last week by the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) about how companies can comply with this ruling.

With today’s announcement, we are moving to be the first company to respond to the EDPB’s guidance with new commitments that demonstrate the strength of our conviction to defend our customers’ data. Microsoft has already demonstrated that we provide strong protections for our customers’ data, we are transparent about our practices and we defend our customers’ data. We believe the new steps we’re announcing today go beyond the law and the EDPB draft recommendations, and we hope these additional steps will give our customers added confidence about their data.

• First, we are committing that we will challenge every government request for public sector or enterprise customer data – from any government – where there is a lawful basis for doing so. This strong commitment goes beyond the proposed recommendations of the EDPB.
• Second, we will provide monetary compensation to these customers’ users if we disclose their data in response to a government request in violation of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This commitment also exceeds the EDPB’s recommendations. It shows Microsoft is confident that we will protect our public sector and enterprise customers’ data and not expose it to inappropriate disclosure.

We call these protections Defending Your Data, and we will begin adding them to our contracts with public sector and enterprise customers immediately.

Defending Your Data makes a substantial addition to our foundational privacy promises, and builds on the strong protections we already offer customers.

• We use strong encryption: We encrypt customer data with a high standard of encryption both when it is in transit and at rest. Encryption is a critical point in the draft EDPB recommendations. We do not provide any government with our encryption keys or any other way to break our encryption.
• We stand up for customer rights: We do not provide any government with direct, unfettered access to customer data. If a government demands customer data from us, it must follow applicable legal process. We will only comply with demands when we are clearly compelled to do so. Our first step is always to attempt to re-direct such orders to customers or to inform them, and we routinely deny or challenge orders when we believe they are not legal.
• We are transparent: We have, for many years, published information about government demands for customer data. We sued the U.S. government over the ability to disclose more data about the national security orders we receive seeking customer data and reached a settlement enabling us to do so. As a result, twice a year, we disclose more detailed information about these national security orders across all our businesses (consumer, enterprise, and public sector), in addition to our regular Law Enforcement Request Report. 

• We have a track record of legal success. We have more experience than any other company going to court to establish the limits of government surveillance orders, and we have even taken one case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Our efforts have provided customers with greater transparency and stronger protections. No commitment to challenge access orders can assure victory, but we feel good about our record of success to date.

 Some of the public discussion about the impact of U.S. government data demands focuses on U.S.-headquartered companies. But it is clear that U.S. laws regarding government access to data apply to companies that do business in the U.S., even if they are headquartered in Europe or elsewhere.

Privacy is a core value for us at Microsoft because we believe people will only use technology if they can trust it. That’s why we were the first cloud provider to work with European data protection authorities for approval of Europe’s model clauses, the first to adopt new technical standards for cloud privacy, and enthusiastic supporters of the GDPR since it was first proposed in 2012. We have extended core rights under the GDPR to consumers around the world, and we have honored core rights of the California Consumer Privacy Act for all our consumers in the United States. In addition, we have launched the Tech Fit for Europe initiative to develop digital solutions based on European values and rules.

We hope the steps we have announced today demonstrate to our enterprise and public sector customers that we will go above and beyond the law to defend their data, and the data of their users.

You can read more about our commitment to privacy here

Tags: data collection, data privacy, Data Protection, defending your data, GDPR, Tech Fit for Europe

Nearly two years into Microsoft’s Affordable Housing Initiative, it has become apparent that in order to close the affordable housing gap in our region we need fresh, innovative approaches to housing finance – in our home state of Washington and nationwide.

Despite continued rapid growth in greater Seattle, our community is not providing enough housing that is affordable for people who live here – particularly low- and middle-income households. For example, between 2011 and 2019 jobs grew 24% while housing only grew 12%, and, while median household income increased by 34% median, housing prices increased by 78%. This challenge is compounded by the deep economic crisis of Covid-19 we continue to live through, and the historical inequity faced by communities of color.

That’s why, today, Microsoft is announcing a set of investments totaling $65 million (of our overall $750 million commitment) to help support the creation of more than 1,000 new affordable housing units for greater Seattle. This includes:

• A new initiative with Urban Housing Ventures supported by Freddie Mac, Stream Real Estate, WaFd Bank and Washington Trust Bank to reduce rents in existing market-rate housing in Bellevue and Kirkland, Washington, quickly creating more affordable living options. We are contributing $40 million to Urban Housing Ventures for this effort
• Continuing our work with the Washington State Housing Finance Commission (WSHFC) to expand a land acquisition program that accelerates the development of new affordable housing. We are providing $25 million to the WSHFC for this program

Together, these investments will deliver more low- and middle-income housing units for greater Seattle by accelerating and extending how capital is leveraged and invested, and in turn attract more capital to the middle-income housing market.

Working closely with these leading regional and national housing organizations, we are pushing ourselves to think creatively and leverage our collective resources in new ways; simply put, the scale of this problem is massive, and we know money alone will not solve the problem.

Perhaps even more importantly, we are confident that these new programs can be replicated in other parts of the country that face similar housing affordability issues. Here’s a more detailed breakdown of what we’re announcing today.

Keeping rent affordable for middle-income households

Typically, affordable housing is built from the ground up, takes years to accomplish and doesn’t address the region’s immediate shortage. The problem gets worse when existing housing developments are purchased and rents are raised for existing tenants. Through this program, Urban Housing Ventures will immediately lower rent on 40% of units so they are affordable to middle-income workers, creating a model that remains attractive for investors. In an expensive city like Bellevue, Washington, this might mean that a teacher in the Bellevue School District or a nurse at Overlake Hospital has a greater opportunity to live in a home close to where they work.

Using this program, we’ve invested in the first project led by Stream Real Estate with the support of Freddie Mac, WaFd Bank and Washington Trust Bank. Microsoft is contributing $40 million to Urban Housing Ventures, which purchased three market-rate apartment buildings in Bellevue and Kirkland, Washington. The reduction in rents at one of these buildings, for example, could save a family of three up to $7,890 per year vs. a market-based rental. Through the collaboration with Freddie Mac, this project did not require any local public subsidies or financing.

Providing land acquisition loans to enable new affordable housing development

The second program Microsoft is supporting is the Expanded Land Acquisition Program (ELAP), which provides access to bridge loans for affordable housing development. This program addresses the availability and cost of land, which is another significant barrier to developing affordable housing, especially in competitive markets like Bellevue, Redmond and Kirkland in Washington state. Because of the region’s dynamic real estate market, would-be affordable housing developers often miss out on opportunities to acquire land because they are unable to compete with the speed and resources of market-rate, commercial developers.

Microsoft is initially providing $25 million to the Washington State Housing Finance Commission (WSHFC) to offer affordable housing developers financing that allows them to compete in a tough market. This partnership builds upon WSHFC’s successful Land Acquisition Program by expanding to middle-income housing development and opening it to both nonprofit and for-profit developers to enable maximum use on the greater Eastside region outside Seattle. If the projects result in applicable improvements to local land use and housing policy – such as zoning reform, permit streamlining and parking requirement reduction – the program will trigger an interest rate reduction of up to 3%. ELAP’s first pilot loan was provided to GMD Development for their 136-unit, low-income housing development in Renton.

Building an innovative future

Innovation in housing finance is only one part of the solution. We’re also seeing the creative thinking and broad collaboration needed for our region to move forward. Five of the projects we’ve announced so far as part of Microsoft’s Affordable Housing Initiative were only achieved through shared problem solving by Microsoft, the public sector and the private sector. And the housing sector is taking notice. On October 27, the WSHFC was recognized with the Management Innovation: Financial award by the National Council of State Housing Agencies for its partnership with Microsoft in creating a line of credit programs to preserve and recycle tax-exempt bond allocations, which we announced in January 2020.

More must be done, particularly with public policy reforms that encourage affordable housing development at a local and regional level. But we recognize that truly impactful change takes time, and we stand ready to accelerate progress in this area. Nationally, our work with Freddie Mac and others represents a meaningful step forward when it comes to practical strategies that can work for other communities around the country.

Microsoft launched its affordable housing initiative in January 2019 because we believe everyone in our community regardless of income level should have a place they can afford to call home. To close the housing gap, we all need to come together in new ways and act with greater urgency, creativity and shared accountability.

Tags: affordable housing, Affordable Housing Initiative, Washington state

Online fraud, hate speech, discrimination and other divisive online risks are on the rise globally, according to results of a new Microsoft study. We’re releasing these findings in conjunction with World Kindness Day in an effort to turn that tide and encourage safer, more empathetic and tolerant online interactions among all people.

Some 31% of respondents in 32 countries¹ say they’ve been exposed to hoaxes, scams and fraud online, up two percentage points from last year, and up three percentage points since the fraud risk was first included in this study in 2017. Meanwhile, one in five respondents (20%) say they’ve been the target of hate speech online, and 15% say they’ve experienced discrimination. These latter two risks are up four and five percentage points, respectively, since the survey began in 2016. All three risks are at their highest levels on record for this research.

Strangers and people whom respondents say they know online only continue to be the primary sources of digital risk – a theme that has prevailed since 2016. In fact, anonymous bullying-type behaviors jumped in this latest poll. Among those respondents who said they had been subjected to bullying, harassment or mean and cruel treatment online ­– 33%, 47% and 37%, respectively – said those behaviors were exhibited by strangers. Still, risks from those identified as “friends” have been inching steadily higher, as well. This year, 22% of respondents said risks were perpetrated by friends, compared to 13% four years ago when 14 countries were included in the research.

The findings are from Microsoft’s latest research into aspects of digital civility – encouraging safer, healthier and more respectful online interactions. The study, Civility, Safety and Interaction Online – 2020, surveyed teens ages 13-17 and adults ages 18-74 about their exposure to 21² different online risks. This latest research builds on similar studies undertaken each year since 2016. Previous years’ projects polled the same demographics in 14, 22, 23, and 25 countries, respectively. In total, 16,051 individuals participated in this latest installment, and we’ve polled more than 58,000 people over the last five years. Complete results will be made available in conjunction with international Safer Internet Day on February 9.

At that time, we’ll also release the latest Microsoft Digital Civility Index, a gauge that looks at the state of online civility in each individual geography, as well as in all 32 combined. The index, which stood at 70 last year, is an indication of the perceived level of civility in that country. The index works like a golf score: A lower reading equates to a higher level of perceived civility among respondents in that country. The 2019 worldwide Digital Civility Index reading was the highest on record thus far for this research and reflects responses from survey participants in 25 countries. (Read more about the 2019 worldwide index and survey here.)

Take the Digital Civility Challenge

As done since the start of this research, we’re encouraging people around the world to take our Digital Civility Challenge and pledge to live by four basic tenets for life online:

• Live the Golden Rule and treat others as you would want to be treated
• Respect differences of all types, including those of thought and opinion
• Pause before replying to something you may disagree with, and
• If it’s safe and prudent to do so, stand up for yourself and others online who may be the target of abuse or cruel treatment.

Results from the latest survey show both teens and adults appear to be championing these actions. Indeed, 58% of adults and 57% of teens report having taken at least one challenge action in response to online risks. “Standing up for myself” was the most common challenge action this year, with 34% of respondents saying they defended themselves online. “Pausing before replying” was noted by 25% of those surveyed.

The Digital Civility Challenge isn’t meant to be a panacea, but rather a starting place to encourage good digital citizenship and active, engaged online communities. We’re not trying to thwart online debate or disagreement. On the contrary, we encourage it, while guarding against heated discussions that quickly devolve to name-calling and abuse.

So, step up to the Digital Civility Challenge this World Kindness Day, and tell us you’ve done so on social media using the hashtag #Im4digitalcivility. To learn more about online safety issues and digital civility generally, visit our website and webpage.

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¹ Geographies polled in 2020: Argentina, Australia*, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark*, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Indonesia*, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Peru, Philippines*, Poland, Russia, Sweden*, Singapore, Spain*, South Africa, Taiwan*, Thailand*, Turkey, U.K., U.S., Vietnam. * Added (or re-added) to the study in 2020

² The 21 risks span four broad categories: behavioral, sexual, reputational and personal/intrusive. Specifically:

Reputational – “Doxing” and damage to personal or professional reputations

Behavioral – Being treated meanly; experiencing trolling, online harassment or bullying; encountering hate speech and microaggressions

Sexual – Sending or receiving unwanted sexting messages and making sexual solicitations; receiving unwanted sexual attention and being a victim of sextortion or non-consensual intimate images (aka “revenge porn”), and

Personal/intrusive – Being the target of unwanted contact, experiencing discrimination, swatting, misogyny, exposure to extremist content/recruiting, or falling victim to hoaxes, scams, or fraud

Tags: digital civility challenge, Digital Civility Index, Online Safety, World Kindness Day

For millions of students around the world, the Covid-19 pandemic has brought about a seismic shift in the way they study, socialize and receive a formal education. In fact, we know that more than 1.6 billion students globally have experienced a disruption to the traditional learning experience. Unfortunately, we also know that the impact of this disruption will be borne disproportionately by the world’s most vulnerable learners.

During this year’s Microsoft Ignite conference, I mentioned that we would be looking at open data to solve challenges related to broadband access and education. Today, I’m happy to announce the launch of our Education Open Data Challenge, in partnership with the Open Data Institute and with support from BroadbandNow, to help generate solutions to close the digital divide in K-12 education (ages 5-18).

To help explain how the Education Open Data Challenge will work and who is eligible to participate, I’d like to answer a few key questions:

What is the Education Open Data Challenge?

The Education Open Data Challenge is an opportunity for teams to evaluate the current state of the global digital divide in K-12 education and suggest innovative solutions to close that divide. Participating teams will be asked to identify gaps in digital infrastructure that affect the delivery of education services online, pinpoint potential impacts on learning outcomes, and suggest innovative and realistic solutions to address these gaps in a cost-efficient way.

Who can participate?

The challenge is open to teams and individuals based anywhere in the world, and we encourage those interested in data analysis, education and closing the digital divide to learn more here.

Are there parameters around the solutions that teams will work on?

The solutions that each team comes up with should focus on:

• The steps governments, education providers, businesses or society can take to help students gain equal access to education in areas affected by a lack of digital infrastructure
• How education system leaders can most effectively improve digital access to enable equal learning for all students
• How to develop the skills needed to make online learning tools and platforms inclusive and effective to students from disadvantaged communities

Are there prizes?

Yes! The winning team will be invited to elect a nonprofit organization of their choice to receive a £50,000 ($66,000) award, with the runners-up electing nonprofit organizations of their choice to receive £30,000 and £20,000 awards.

What is the deadline for registration, and when will we know who the winners are?

Individuals can pre-register starting today and the challenge will open on December 10, 2020. Proposals are due by January 31, 2021. Winning teams will be announced on May 1, 2021. More information about the timeline and upcoming activities can be found here.

More than ever, reliance on access to broadband has the potential to determine whether students thrive or struggle in their educational journeys. If we want to level the playing field so all students have access to the technology and connectivity they need to be successful, we need to work together and collaborate around data that has the potential to unlock truly promising solutions. I look forward to sharing updates on the challenge and its participants in the weeks and months ahead.

Tags: broadband access, education, Microsoft Ignite Conference, Open Data, Open Data Campaign, Open Data Challenge

In 2016, as the United States emerged from a close and contentious national election, we published a blog on the need to find new ways for the country to move forward together. As we reflected that year on the election of Donald Trump, we started with a straightforward proposition, saying:

“Every president-elect deserves our congratulations, best wishes and support for the country as a whole. The peaceful transition of power has been an enduring and vital part of our democracy for over two centuries, and it remains so today.”

Four years later, these words are no less important. As we did in 2016, we offer today our congratulations to the new President- and Vice-President-Elect: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Election Day this year turned into a very long and tense election week, with many Americans glued to their screens anxiously awaiting the outcome. It has been commonplace to hear pundits speculate that we have seldom seemed such a divided country. If true, this also makes a different proposition even more self-evident. If we are to move forward as a nation, we must build new bridges to close the gaps that divide us.

At Microsoft, we believe that Americans share more common ground than many pundits acknowledge, particularly when it comes to technology issues. On many of these matters, there is an opportunity to separate policies from politics so we can make a real difference in people’s lives. Consider the following:

• A clear lesson from Covid-19 is that access to technology has become indispensable in an increasingly digital world. This starts with digital devices, but quickly extends to high-speed internet access. Broadband has become the electricity of the 21st century, vital for everything from patients needing telehealth consultations to children who are attending school from home. Today, too many rural families find there is no broadband service available, while too many underprivileged urban families find no broadband service that is affordable. A nation that would not tolerate millions of Americans living without electricity should no longer accept millions of families without broadband.
• Technology-fueled automation increasingly impacts all of our jobs. Digital tools, data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) have the potential to make almost all of us in every job category more successful – but only if we have easier access to the new digital skills that are increasingly indispensable to the jobs of the future. This has become vital for first-line as well as knowledge workers, creating benefits for those in vital positions that range from health care to manufacturing to the nation’s retailers. Yet we enter the 2020s following two decades of declining and then stagnating employer investments in workforce training, and post-secondary education that has left too many students confronting debt without a degree. We need to make digital skills available to everyone.
• Across the political spectrum, Americans share not just a commitment to, but a reverence for, democracy. Yet the health of democracy today relies not just on individual acts of voting. It requires constant vigilance and an effective collective defense against cyber-based attacks on candidates and voting systems, and disinformation campaigns against the public itself. At Microsoft, this led us this election cycle to work across the political aisle to protect Republican and Democratic candidates alike. We conclude this election year even more convinced of the importance of using technology to protect not just the democratic process, but our fundamental freedoms. More than ever, we need ongoing technology innovation and stronger partnerships across the public and private sectors to better defend democracy.
• During a time when our daily lives rely so heavily on digital devices, trust in technology has become an issue of paramount importance. People of all political backgrounds care deeply about the privacy of their data and the security of their internet services. The questions around trust in technology continue to become even more multifaceted, now also including digital safety and responsible practices for AI. Yet we continue to live with a national electronic privacy law enacted in the dial-up era of the 1980s, and when it comes to issues such as safeguards for facial recognition, we have no national law at all. We need new laws fit for the future.
• Regardless of political party, people want our economy to prosper. The 20th century saw technology innovation not just spur productivity growth but spread its benefits broadly – to every state and to most industries, creating the foundation for a broadening middle class. As a company that provides so many productivity and other digital services for businesses of all sizes, we have a clear window into the need for a new and similar wave of broader productivity growth. We believe that technology innovation needs to create more business opportunities for every part of the economy as well as ushering in a new era for enhanced public sector services and efficiencies.

When we consider all these issues, it is apparent that there are opportunities to build new bridges between us and to strengthen the ties that bind us in common purpose. All these challenges are ripe for bipartisan collaboration and for government and industry cooperation.

This opportunity to build new bridges extends to the international arena as well. We live in a decade that has started with a virus that respects no border and carbon that moves in the atmosphere not just from country to country, but from continent to continent. More and more of the issues of our day require stronger collaboration between the United States and the rest of the world.

None of this means that the differences that divide Americans are unimportant. We live with different views on many fundamental issues. As a company, we have not shied away from controversies that we care about, whether they involve racial equity, immigration or climate change. Under each of the last two American presidents, we found that we were served best by efforts to partner where we can, while standing apart where we should. And we will continue with this approach.

Along the way, we have learned that we have far more opportunities to partner across the political spectrum than most people recognize. But we need to move from debates about why we cannot succeed to conversations about how we can. The more bridges we can cross together, the more we likely will find that Americans of all backgrounds in every state and county share far more in common than we currently appreciate.

As we look to the next four years, this should give us not only reason for hope, but cause for optimism.

Tags: 2020 elections, broadband access, COVID-19, Defending Democracy Program, rural broadband

For software developers, app stores have become a critical gateway to some of the world’s most popular digital platforms. We and others have raised questions and, at times, expressed concerns about app stores on other digital platforms. However, we recognize that we should practice what we preach. So, today, we are adopting 10 principles – building on the ideas and work of the Coalition for App Fairness (CAF) – to promote choice, ensure fairness and promote innovation on Windows 10, our most popular platform, and our own Microsoft Store on Windows 10:

1. Developers will have the freedom to choose whether to distribute their apps for Windows through our app store. We will not block competing app stores on Windows.
2. We will not block an app from Windows based on a developer’s business model or how it delivers content and services, including whether content is installed on a device or streamed from the cloud.
3. We will not block an app from Windows based on a developer’s choice of which payment system to use for processing purchases made in its app.
4. We will give developers timely access to information about the interoperability interfaces we use on Windows, as set forth in our Interoperability Principles.
5. Every developer will have access to our app store as long as it meets objective standards and requirements, including those for security, privacy, quality, content and digital safety.
6. Our app store will charge reasonable fees that reflect the competition we face from other app stores on Windows and will not force a developer to sell within its app anything it doesn’t want to sell.
7. Our app store will not prevent developers from communicating directly with their users through their apps for legitimate business purposes.
8. Our app store will hold our own apps to the same standards to which it holds competing apps.
9. Microsoft will not use any non-public information or data from its app store about a developer’s app to compete with it.
10. Our app store will be transparent about its rules and policies and opportunities for promotion and marketing, apply these consistently and objectively, provide notice of changes and make available a fair process to resolve disputes.

We will review these principles from time to time to determine whether we should add to or change them to reflect feedback as well as technology, business or regulatory developments.

How these principles will work.

Windows 10 is an open platform. Unlike some other popular digital platforms, developers are free to choose how they distribute their apps. The Microsoft Store is one way. We believe that it provides significant benefits to consumers and to developers by ensuring that the available apps meet strong privacy, security and safety standards, while making them easier to find and providing additional tools and services so developers can focus on development.

But there are other popular and competitive alternatives on Windows 10. Third-party app stores, such as those from Steam and Epic, are available for Windows and offer developers different pricing (or revenue share) options, standards, requirements and features. And developers can also easily choose to distribute their apps on their own terms directly over the internet without restrictions. The first four principles are designed to preserve this freedom of choice, and the robust competition and innovation that it enables on Windows 10.

For developers who do choose to use the Microsoft Store, we want to make sure they know that they will be held to the same objective standards as others, will face reasonable, competitive fees that reflect the value they receive, and can be confident we will not use the Microsoft Store to tilt the playing field to our advantage. The remaining principles are aimed at providing that assurance. For example, as an app developer, we have been frustrated at times by other app stores that require us to sell services in our apps even when our users don’t expect or want them and we cannot do so profitably. So, principle No. 6 provides developers who choose to use the Microsoft Store with the flexibility to decide what to sell in their apps. Over the next several months, we will do the work needed to close any gaps between the current rules and policies in our Microsoft Store and the aspirations set out in these principles.

We also operate a store on the Xbox console. It’s reasonable to ask why we are not also applying these principles to that Xbox store today. Game consoles are specialized devices optimized for a particular use. Though well-loved by their fans, they are vastly outnumbered in the marketplace by PCs and phones. And the business model for game consoles is very different to the ecosystem around PCs or phones. Console makers such as Microsoft invest significantly in developing dedicated console hardware but sell them below cost or at very low margins to create a market that game developers and publishers can benefit from. Given these fundamental differences in the significance of the platform and the business model, we have more work to do to establish the right set of principles for game consoles.

What’s next?

We think it is important to have a public discussion about how to fairly balance the interests of software developers and platform owners and the best path forward for app stores on our most popular platforms. Apps play an important role in the daily lives of billions of consumers and help to enable the modern digital economy for millions of businesses. But the innovation that drives the app economy also needs healthy and vibrant digital platforms. We know that regulators and policymakers are reviewing these issues and considering legal reforms to promote competition and innovation in digital markets. We think the CAF principles, and our implementation of them, can serve as productive examples. Applying these principles to the Microsoft Store on Windows 10 is a first step and we look forward to feedback from developers and the broader community.

Tags: apps, CAF, Coalition for App Fairness, Microsoft Store, Windows 10