Societal Resilience
Building a more resilient society through mission-driven research and applied technology
Revealing the Hidden Structure of Corruption
Learn about our participation in the Microsoft ACTS (opens in new tab) initiative on Anti-Corruption Technologies and Solutions, including the development of new tools aiming to support the global fight against corruption. These include a proof-of-concept “transparency engine” that could bring new levels of transparency to public procurement data, building on collaborations with the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the University of Bristol. Alongside a major update to our Synthetic Data Showcase (opens in new tab) tool for private data sharing, and the public preview of our ShowWhy (opens in new tab) tool for guided causal inference, these tools mark our continued commitment to addressing challenging societal issues with technology.
Mapping Organizational Resilience
To mark the joint publication of our latest organizational resilience work across the MSR blog (opens in new tab), Microsoft Work Trends Index (opens in new tab), and Harvard Business Review (opens in new tab), we describe our history of work in this area and how it helped to shape our general principles for societal resilience research.
Covid-19 Vaccine Eligibility Bot
Our goal with this project was to create a conversational chatbot to unify vaccine information access in the United States. This bot would interact via a simple workflow of Yes or No questions to determine their vaccine eligibility. We designed this bot to be simple, accessible, deployed on a variety of communication channels (web, SMS, WhatsApp, etc.).
Tech Against Trafficking
To tackle human trafficking in both its chronic and acute forms, we must recognize that the fight against trafficking is itself a complex societal activity that requires resilience to succeed. It is within this context that Microsoft jointly founded the Tech Against Trafficking (opens in new tab) (TAT) coalition in 2018. Through our work on the TAT steering committee and across initiatives including an accelerator program, we have formed long-term partnerships and projects tackling this most urgent societal problem. This led to the development of the TAT Interactive Map (opens in new tab) in Power BI, encompassing 300 counter-trafficking technology tools, and the Counter-Trafficking Data Collaborative (opens in new tab) (CTDC), the world’s largest database on identified victims of trafficking.