Working with governments to make a positive impact
Microsoft is committed to being a responsible industry partner, working with businesses, communities, and governments to help advance social and economic well-being and to enable people around the world to realize their full potential.
Over the past three decades, we have expanded our business from the United States into more than 90 other countries, and we now employ nearly 60,000 people globally. While Microsoft, by many measures, could be considered the world's most successful software company, it is also a local company and a neighbor in every country and community where its employees live, work, and do business.
Because of this, Microsoft sees a responsibility to use its resources and influence to make a positive impact. At Microsoft, our passion to do well is matched by our desire to do good. We believe the best way to achieve those parallel goals is to align our business and global citizenship strategies. To achieve that goal, we consulted with our employees, and with people in government and industry from many parts of the world, because we wanted to create a citizenship framework that would both reflect and enhance the other aspects of our business.
As a result, we have developed programs that help governments become more secure, improve their operations, and begin to close the digital divide more efficiently. Learn more about these programs.
Other recent examples of Microsoft citizenship activities undertaken with government entities include:
Building the School of the Future
Microsoft and the School District of Philadelphia joined forces to create a 750-student high school—opened in September 2006—that embodies innovation and technology. The goal of the partnership is to create a technology-based educational model that can be replicated in communities around the globe. If you'd like to tour the school, register here.
Child Exploitation Tracking System
Microsoft worked with Canadian police and international law enforcement agencies to develop the Child Exploitation Tracking System (CETS), a unique and innovative software tool that helps protect children and reduce child exploitation online and increases the effectiveness of investigators and police agencies.
Partners in Learning
Through Partners in Learning (PIL), Microsoft is working with government, departments of education, and other key stakeholders to offer a spectrum of education resources—tools, programs, and practices—that empower students and teachers to realize their full potential. The Partners in Learning program invests Microsoft resources, including people, partnerships, services, philanthropy, and products, to stimulate positive change in K-12 education. The focus is on developing the ability of individuals and the academic organization to support 21st-century learning, digital inclusion, and education reform.
Partnerships for Technology Access (PTA)
The Partnerships for Technology Access (PTA) Program is about making PCs relevant and affordable through public-private partnerships. PTA marshals resources and directs its expertise at working with in-country Microsoft staff as well as individual governments and private interests within a country to create innovative ways to accomplish two important objectives. First, PTA helps make PC ownership relevant to people who know little about the attributes of owning a computer. Second, we work to remove the cost barrier for a nation's working poor. Country-specific non-traditional financing schemes that grant loans to those with little or no credit history are developed. PTA draws on its experiences around the world to help those within a country create a program that is unique to them.
USO support
The USO is a private nonprofit organization whose mission is to boost morale by providing welfare programs and recreational services to the men and women who serve the United States. The original intent of Congress—and the enduring style of USO delivery—is to represent the American people by extending a touch of home to the military. Microsoft is pleased to partner with the USO in support of various USO activities including sponsorship of the BWI Gateway Lounge, supporting volunteer efforts for the USO Operation Care Package Program and the USO Santa Program, and more.
Learn more about global citizenship at Microsoft
