Brad Smith, president and vice chair at Microsoft Corporation, has announced that Microsoft has launched Open Data for Society. It is a central location for datasets that Microsoft has made open. 

He added that data can enable organisations and community leaders to help address important societal issues – but only if they can access it. Open Data Society is another step in the company’s Open Data Campaign, which aims to make data more open and more usable for all. “Who knows what discovery or innovation will be unlocked simply because the teams had open access to good data,” added Smith.

The website gives us an idea about what to expect from the Open Data Society. Some datasets include:

• US broadband usage percentages – The broadband usage percentages dataset shows broadband access at the US county level to work on gaps in service availability.
• Solar farms mapping in India – Through this dataset, researchers can identify factors that contribute to land suitability for solar projects. This can help public agencies to plan to site solar energy development in India effectively.
• BankNote-Net – It was created as an open dataset for assistive universal currency recognition.

Tools 

Microsoft is also providing tools to help in extracting information. These include:

• Differential privacy – Differential privacy introduces statistical noise–slight alterations–to mask datasets and protect the privacy of individuals.
• Azure confidential computing – Confidential computing will help to protect sensitive data in the cloud by offering security through data-in-use encryption, claimed Microsoft.
• Azure open datasets – A curated collection of publicly available datasets are made available to use in machine learning workflows.