Transparency
What is it, and why does it matter?
ACTS facts
Watch and learn more about Microsoft ACTS and anti-corruption topics:
What does transparency mean in the public sector?
- Transparency in the public sector is about being open, honest, and forthcoming with information. This optimizes the use of data to promote and protect good governance.
- ACTS considers transparency one of its four guiding principles, along with responsibly deploying advanced technology, collaboration between the public-private sectors, and sustaining rule of law.
- To make informed decisions, governments need to understand all relevant information pertaining to the parties involved, be they businesses, individuals, or other organizations.
- Citizens need to know about and trust what their governments are doing.
Why does accelerating transparency matter to governments?
- Having more information earlier helps governments be proactive in the best interests of citizens rather than being reactive to minimize damage.
- Proactively reducing potential corruption ensures that funds are allocated as intended for social services, public projects, transportation, utilities, and other services.
- Transparency builds trust with citizens that their government is working effectively. Our solutions help build the foundation needed to effectively use transparency for better governance.
- With the rest of Microsoft, we share a sense of urgency not only to implement new technology like AI but also to do so responsibly and safely.
How does ACTS help governments improve their transparency efforts?
- Governments have vast quantities of data. ACTS helps to visualize data in dashboards that reveal potential risks and help governments more quickly spot suspicious patterns of behavior that require further investigation.
- Our transparency platform uses cutting-edge cloud-based technology, AI, and machine learning for this advanced data analysis, which is applied to focus areas including procurement and taxes.
- We work with a global network of Microsoft local partners who are equipped to understand a country’s unique challenges and interests and are familiar with its customs and culture. This enables ACTS to provide customizable transparency solutions that meet the unique needs of governments worldwide.
Revealing risk from patterns in data
Proactive risk identification is increasingly possible with new technology. With advanced relationship mapping and visual representations of suspicious patterns, agencies can improve risk mitigation efforts and optimize resources. These digital solutions analyze vast amounts of data in search of potential issues or patterns that may suggest illicit activity.
Risk signals
Using technology to uncover potential indicators of corruption.
What are risk signals, and how are they valuable to governments?
- A risk signal—or “red flag”—refers to any kind of potential indicator of illicit activity in data that warrants further investigation.
- Risk signals help enable governments to identify potentially problematic transactions before they occur. This helps improve monitoring, auditing, and enforcement. With machine learning and artificial intelligence, models can be trained to spot connections between datasets, helping humans find important insights. Because some of these insights uncover wrongdoing, the earlier this behavior comes to light, the better the response.
How does digital technology help identify risk?
- Digital technology uses automated monitoring and in-depth data analysis to identify and uncover potential signs of misconduct in procurement or other transactions. These solutions do not replace the need for manual review but allow investigators to act faster, dive deeper, and reveal more accurate results than traditional manual processes on their own.
- Technology can uncover patterns in data that would otherwise be invisible to the human eye, and a proactive strategy means potential signs of misconduct can be detected and acted on before they become problems.
- Digital technology can provide visual representations of suspicious patterns, helping further improve risk mitigation efforts. Such visualization significantly simplifies the identification of problems, meaning that even those who aren’t technical experts can use it as an effective tool.
How does ACTS help governments identify risk signals?
- ACTS solutions incorporate modern technology such as AI and machine learning to help governments be more proactive about identifying risks, such as suspicious behaviors of suppliers during procurement. Government investigators use these types of solutions to prioritize unusual patterns (risk signals or “red flags”) in the data that may suggest the possibility of collusion, obfuscation, or other illicit activity.
- ACTS solutions often use advanced relationship mapping to present suspicious activities visually in an interactive interface. These maps identify known patterns of behavior and unreported connections among suppliers. Their easy comprehension allows agencies to shift from less efficient, reactive operations to a proactive posture that is more effective at reducing corruption.
Revealing hidden relationships in complex datasets
With machine learning and artificial intelligence, models can be trained to spot connections between datasets, helping humans find important insights. Because some of these insights uncover wrongdoing, the earlier this behavior comes to light, the better the response.
Innovations in technology are accelerating anti-corruption efforts
Technology can uncover patterns in data that would otherwise be invisible to the human eye, and a proactive strategy means potential signs of misconduct can be detected and acted on before they become problems.
Uncovering risks with red flags
As procurement data sets grow larger and more siloed, it becomes nearly impossible for individuals to effectively monitor for signs of misconduct. Today, technology can close that gap by enabling an automated monitoring that can uncover key risk signals - or “red flags” - throughout the procurement process.
Governance
What is governance, and what does it mean?
What is governance, and what does it mean in the public sector?
- Governance in the public sector refers to a system of tools and processes used by government agencies to monitor rules and regulations and manage public resources.
- Good governance exhibits accountability, integrity, and transparency.
How does digital technology help with governance?
- New innovations in technology help governments share and use their data more effectively, accelerating digital transformation and improving transparency.
- Digital tools like AI and algorithms provide new levels of insight that impact and improve public sector governance decisions.
How does Microsoft ACTS help improve public sector governance?
- The mission of the ACTS initiative is to mobilize data and technology to assist governments in accelerating transparency, a key component of governance. Furthermore, ACTS solutions progressively impact almost all aspects of governance across a wide spectrum that includes internal agencies, supply chains, citizens, and contracts. We take a principled approach to provide transparency solutions in areas such as procurement, tax, customs, investigations, and audit work.
- By sharing our own journey, our learnings, and where we still need to go—and by being transparent in how we continue to improve—we believe we can create more effective solutions that governments can use to improve their governance.
Copilot
What is it, and why does it matter?
What is a copilot?
- A copilot is a new capability that’s being integrated into a variety of digital applications to help individuals use these tools more efficiently.
- Think of it as a digital personal assistant that accelerates the process of achieving a desired outcome with a given product. Just as human copilots assist pilots with flying planes, digital copilots work alongside us in the platforms we use, but they’re not in charge—we are.
- At Microsoft, thanks to our partnership with OpenAI, we’ve started to embed OpenAI’s models to act as copilots across our products, services, and capabilities, including ACTS.
How are copilot capabilities used by ACTS?
- ACTS solutions harness generative AI/ large language models (LLMs) to help public sector organizations get critical answers from their vast quantities of data, detect potential risks and suspicious activity faster, and ultimately accelerate transparency.
- In a private implementation, you can query your own data sets in a new way, asking questions and getting instant responses just as if you were talking to a person. This speeds up the process and reduces the time to insight.
- At Microsoft, we have implemented privacy, security, and Responsible AI by design across all of our AI capabilities to keep our customers’ data secure when they’re using these technologies.
- Security, transparency, privacy, user controls, and compliance with data protection requirements are built into all of our copilot capabilities so our customers can harness the full potential of AI while also ensuring the highest levels of security and privacy.
How is ACTS using copilot technologies to support its mission?
- By integrating copilot into our capabilities, we’re making it possible for governments to sort through massive amounts of data that would be virtually impossible to analyze manually, so public sector organizations can visualize and uncover connections between data that might otherwise go undetected.
- We’re also making new data science techniques more accessible and easier to use without requiring public sector employees to become experts in using AI and LLMs.
- With copilot, we’re leveraging the capabilities of LLMs and applying them to help governments accelerate transparency and reduce corruption.