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Resources for Governments & Community Partners

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Accenture
Adobe
Amazon
Apple
Autodesk
Dell
Dropbox
Ericsson
Facebook
Google
Honeywell
IBM
Intel
Juniper Networks
LinkedIn
Microsoft
Oracle
SAP
Samsung
ServiceNow
Snap Inc.
Twilio
Twitter
VMware


Accenture

Working with companies including ServiceNow, Accenture launched People + Work Connect, an employer-to-employer initiative that brings together companies laying off or furloughing people with those companies in urgent need of workers. The Accenture-built platform enables companies to quickly share the experience and skills of their laid-off or furloughed employees to connect with other companies seeking workers. It is global and cross-industry to maximize the ability to deploy people with similar skills in one industry into other industries where jobs are being created. The tool is free for employers to join and use.

Adobe

To better enable virtual business environments for remote workforce, and as enterprises reorient their business operations from conferences, collaboration to classrooms, Adobe Connect can meet business needs with its interactive, scalable and secure virtual environments for businesses. In response to international public health advisories, Adobe is providing free 90-day access to Adobe Connect to help government agencies and businesses enable virtual environments for real-time collaboration and online training.

Adobe is also working with governments adapt to the challenges brought about by COVID-19, including a Government Rapid Response program to assist with maintaining stability and continuity for employees and constituents. Adobe’s initiatives to support government agencies include:

  • Complementary Telework Webinars. Adobe’s free webinar series, “Telework Strategies for Government Continuity,” offers governments practical strategies and tools to enable their remote workforce with easy-to-use, all-digital workflows. Webinar speakers will include Adobe experts and government leaders on the front lines of COVID-19 efforts.
  • Rapid Response Resource Hub. This hub offers government IT administrators step-by-step use case recipes and quick start learning videos, such as sending telework agreements to employees in batch, self-serve web forms for timesheets or time-off approvals, and predefined workflows for use cases like emergency procurement requests. Adobe has extended its free trial for government quick-start users of Sign, learn more here.
  • Government-oriented programs. For Document Could Enterprise Term License Agreement (ETLA) customers, Adobe is eliminating additional license charges for 60 days. Adobe is also extending the renewal grace period to 60 days for Document Cloud enterprise customers in our Value Incentive Plan (VIP). Visit Adobe’s COVID government resources page or call your Adobe account manager to learn more.
  • Rapid response team. Adobe’s government rapid response team is available to help agencies and government employees with tasks ranging from strategic planning, to rapid configuration, and template or workflow creation – even while working remotely.

Learn more on Adobe’s COVID government resources page.

Amazon

Amazon is establishing the Amazon Relief Fund with a $25 million initial contribution focused on supporting its independent delivery service partners and their drivers, Amazon Flex participants, and seasonal employees under financial distress during this challenging time. Amazon is offering all of these groups the ability to apply for grants approximately equal to up to two-weeks of pay if diagnosed with COVID-19 or placed into quarantine by the government or Amazon. Additionally, this fund will support its employees and contractors around the world who face financial hardships from other qualifying events, such as a natural disaster, federally declared emergency, or unforeseen personal hardship. Applicants can apply and receive a personal grant from the fund ranging from $400 to $5,000 USD per person. Amazon will be publishing a website in the coming days where employees and contractors can apply for grants from the fund.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is also partnering with VolunteerSurge.org, a nonprofit dedicated to recruiting, training, and deploying volunteer health workers to response to the crisis. Through its cloud computing services, AWS offers an online training platform and facilitates the streaming of volunteer training videos.

Apple

Apple’s COVID-19 website and COVID-19 app were created in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the White House Coronavirus Task Force and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide the latest information and guidance on COVID-19 for users across the US.

Both allow users to answer a series of questions around risk factors, recent exposure and symptoms for themselves or a loved one. In turn, they will receive CDC recommendations on next steps, including guidance on social distancing and self-isolating, how to closely monitor symptoms, whether or not a test is recommended at this time, and when to contact a medical provider. Note, this new screening tool is designed to be a resource for individuals and does not replace instructions from healthcare providers or guidance from state and local health authorities.

To help governments and public health officials reduce the spread of the COVID-19, Apple and Google are undertaking a joint effort that uses Bluetooth technology to support opt-in contact tracing on mobile devices. Since the virus can be transmitted through close proximity to affected individuals, public health authorities, universities, and NGOs have cited this tool as a way to help contain the virus’s spread. While still under development, the Bluetooth-based contact tracing platform would be built into underlying platforms. Apple and Google are also developing a comprehensive solution that includes application programming interfaces (APIs) and operating system-level technology to assist in enabling contact tracing. They plan to implement the solution in two steps while maintaining strong protections around user privacy.

Additionally, to help curb misinformation, Apple News has set up a dedicated section within its app for coverage of the coronavirus outbreak, featuring stories from reputable publishers curated by Apple News Editors. Apple has also curated a list of apps available for free download from reputable news organizations, many of which are offering unlimited access to their coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.

For new apps related to the virus, Apple has expedited approval and issued restrictions to ensure the apps’ information and purpose is reputable.

Autodesk

Autodesk has developed a hub offering resources to designers, manufacturers and makers working to develop personal protection equipment, life-saving devices, and other products to help with the COVID response. Its goal is to connect resources and people looking to help with pressing needs through its portal, while offering resources for designers and makers who want to find ways to get involved.

Dell

Dell is working with customers in the area of infectious disease prevention and control. For example, Dell’s advanced computing clusters are being used to understand disease outbreaks, including how diseases like COVID-19 are spreading and how to better track them. Additionally, the University of Texas at Austin and other institutions in Hong Kong, mainland China and France used the Texas Advanced Computing Center’s (TACC) Wrangler system to analyze comprehensive travel data from location-based services to develop a model of the spread of the virus through China.

Dell has also set aside $3 million USD in funds and in-kind technology donations to help meet the greatest needs of communities and the front-line organizations working to treat and contain COVID-19 around the world. As the situation evolves, Dell will continue to assess opportunities to leverage our technology to deliver support where it is needed most.

Dell has set up a fundraising page where team members can donate to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Foundation to help in the relief efforts. The CDC Foundation's Emergency Response Fund is used to meet fast-emerging needs identified by the CDC to help respond to the public health threat posed by COVID-19. These include additional support for state and local health departments, support for the global response, logistics, communications, data management, personal protective equipment, critical response supplies and more.

Dropbox

Dropbox is a smart workspace and collaboration platform that integrates with the cloud/web-based tools workers need to do their jobs securely and effectively while practicing social distancing. Dropbox has published a series of resources on its blog to help people work in distributed teams, as well as Dropbox product tips to help users get the most out of its services while working remotely. Dropbox is updating and adding to these resources regularly.

Dropbox is offering free Dropbox Business subscriptions for a three-month period to nonprofits and NGOs that are focused on fighting COVID-19. Organizations working to stop the virus or providing relief to those impacted are encouraged to apply here.

Ericsson

In response to the call to action issued by the White House to the tech community, Ericsson has partnered with the National Institutes of Health, Georgetown University, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on their open research dataset challenge (CORD-19). This challenge has 10 open tasks, ranging from understanding COVID-19 risk factors to finding treatment protocols. Already, 250 of the company’s engineers, data scientists, and AI experts signed-up and highly motivated to contribute and come up with innovative solutions to combat COVID-19.

Facebook

Facebook, the American Red Cross, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) are working together to make Portal from Facebook devices available to Veterans and their caregivers and families to reduce isolation and improve social connectedness at home. The VA partnered with Facebook to provide more than 7,400 devices and the American Red Cross Military Veteran Caregiver Network will store and ship the devices to qualifying veterans in pairs.

Google

To help governments and public health officials reduce the spread of the COVID-19, Google and Apple are undertaking a joint effort that uses Bluetooth technology to support opt-in contact tracing on mobile devices. Since the virus can be transmitted through close proximity to affected individuals, public health authorities, universities, and NGOs have cited this tool as a way to help contain the virus’s spread. While still under development, the Bluetooth-based contact tracing platform would be built into underlying platforms. Google and Apple are also developing a comprehensive solution that includes application programming interfaces (APIs) and operating system-level technology to assist in enabling contact tracing. They plan to implement the solution in two steps while maintaining strong protections around user privacy.

In addition, Google’s Mobility Reports use aggregated anonymized data to chart movement trends over time by geography to help support public health strategies, like social distancing measures, to slow the rate of transmission. The reports look at how busy certain places can be such as workplaces, retail and recreation, groceries and pharmacies, parks, transit stations, and residential. Each report adheres to stringent privacy protections and does not reveal individual movement or visits to specific establishments and is based on aggregated anonymized data from Google Location History. Location History is off by default and users can delete this information at any time by visiting their Google Account. Read more about the project here.

Google.org is committing $50 million to the global COVID-19 response. As part of that support, we’ll be matching up to $5 million in donations to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) new COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund to support global preparedness and response in communities affected by the spread of COVID-19. Campaign live here: g.co/covid19-donate.

Google.org is also continuing to support HealthMap, which is run by a team of researchers, epidemiologists and software developers based out of Boston Children's Hospital with contributors from Harvard, Oxford, Northeastern, and Johns Hopkins among others. Google’s grant will support their data collection and mapping to inform COVID-19 response and epidemiological modeling.

As the coronavirus outbreak continues, Google committed more than $800 million to support small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), health organizations and governments, and health workers on the frontline of this global pandemic.

That commitment includes:

  • $250 million in ad grants to help the World Health Organization (WHO) and more than 100 government agencies globally to provide critical information on how to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and other measures and $20 million in ad grants to community financial institutions and non-government organizations to run public service announcements on relief funds and other resources for SMBs.
  • A $200 million investment fund that will support NGOs and financial institutions around the world to help provide small businesses with access to capital, in addition to the $15 million in cash grants Google.org is already providing to nonprofits to help bridge gaps for SMBs.
  • $340 million in Google Ads credits available to all SMBs with active accounts over the past year.
  • A pool of $20 million in Google Cloud credits for academic institutions and researchers to leverage our computing capabilities and infrastructure as they study potential therapies and vaccines, track critical data, and identify new ways to combat COVID-19.

Direct financial support and expertise to help increase the production capacity for personal protective equipment (PPE) and lifesaving medical devices.

Honeywell

Honeywell is increasing production and making millions of N95 masks to aid health care and safety professionals and first responders in their response to COVID-19. The masks, which provide respiratory protection, will be manufactured in Smithfield, Rhode Island and delivered to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for distribution. Learn more here.

IBM

Call for Code Global Challenge. IBM is steering its resources to marshal a “Call for Code Global Challenge” to focus on solutions aimed at COVID-19.

IBM’s “Call For Code” program rewards independent developers around the world for helping to solve societal problems. More than 210,000 participants from 165 nations have taken part in Call for Code to date; they created more than 8,000 applications focused on natural disaster preparedness and relief, such as helping first responders in California fight wildfires, aiding the rehabilitation of Notre Dame Cathedral, and the creation of emergency communications connectivity in communities that were hardest hit by hurricanes in Puerto Rico.

This latest action identifies three areas for developers to create applications that address the pandemic crisis:

  • Crisis communication for medical teams and emergency services;
  • Ways to improve remote learning, since millions of students around the world are now in virtual classrooms; and
  • How to help create cooperative local communities.

Applications will be built on open source software, including Red Hat OpenShift, IBM Cloud, IBM Watson and data from The Weather Company. IBM technical experts will work with teams who create the most promising solutions to build, fortify, test, and deploy them. It’s a way to bring individual developers and small development teams together and help them scale to solve some of the problems we now face.

IBM's Watson Health unit is working directly with health organizations around the world to better understand the nature of COVID-19. The IBM Clinical Development system has been made available – without charge – to national health agencies to reduce the time and cost of clinical trials by providing data and analysis from web-enabled devices. IBM’s cognitive Operational Risk Insight tool has also been made available to not-for-profit organizations.

IBM’s Watson is also being used to help communicate to global citizens about the virus. Using Watson Assistant for Citizens -- a virtual agent being offered free of charge for at least 90 days to governments, healthcare and academic organizations – aims to guide citizens who need answers to their questions about prevention, treatment and other related topics on the coronavirus website according to policies set by countries’ health departments and other local sources.

Here are some of the governments using Watson Assistant for Citizens:

  • ARKANSAS, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences deployed a virtual agent in 9 days so citizens can get their questions answered quickly about testing, symptoms or resources. Information is automatically sent to a mobile COVID-19 triage clinic electronically to help speed response. Average registration time has been reduced by fifty percent for those using the assistant.
  • GEORGIA: Children's Healthcare of Atlanta - The “COVID-19 Pediatric Assessment Tool” walks parents through a series of questions and results in suggested next steps that a parent should take. Recommendations on next steps are made according to the healthcare system’s established protocols.
  • TEXAS: The City of Austin implemented Watson Assistant for Citizens to enable the sharing of COVID-19-related information for citizens and interactive conversation on where to get testing and other information.
  • CZECH REPUBLIC: The Czech Ministry of Health deployed a COVID-19 virtual agent called "Anežka" that advises citizens about prevention, treatment and other related topics on the coronavirus. Anežka handles thousands of conversations per hour and has a 60% deflection rate.
  • GREECE: The Hellenic Ministry of Digital Governance implemented a virtual agent for COVID-19-related information for citizens and interactive conversations on preventive and precautionary measures issued by the Greek Government.
  • POLAND: The Polish Ministry of Health is using the capability to provide COVID-19 information for Polish citizens on common questions such as symptoms and recommended procedures to follow in case of infection.
  • SPAIN: The Andalusian Government deployed a virtual agent to help respond to citizen’s queries about COVID-19, available through their app and website. The EPES has received an average of 261,284 calls per day for all available healthcare lines with the highest volume exceeding 766,000 calls on March 16th - Watson Assistant has been the first touch point in helping them respond and manage those queries.
  • UK: The National Health Service Wales and Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board will soon be implementing “CERi,” an English and Welsh speaking virtual assistant, to support healthcare workers and the general public in Wales who need information or have questions on the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 along with general information about the virus.

Supporting Technologies for COVID-19 Treatment. IBM has taken steps aimed to help researchers and medical experts identify a potential COVID-19 treatment.

The company signed the Open COVID Pledge, granting free access to IBM’s 80,000+ patents available portfolio to those developing technologies to help diagnose, prevent, contain or treat the coronavirus. An example of a relevant patent includes one that describes anti-viral agents like cationic polyamines that active against a broad spectrum of viruses, including Dengue, H1N1, SARS, influenza and coronaviruses. Other relevant patents, for example, describe a touchscreen that uses ultraviolet light for pathogen mitigation and algorithms for predicting the time and range of events, including epidemics. IBM’s pledge will last for the life of its more than 80,000 patents and patent applications, and any new patent applications filed through the end of 2023 will likewise be covered by this commitment.

IBM also released cloud- and AI-based tools and resources aimed to help researchers, doctors and scientists accelerate COVID-19 drug discovery.
These technologies, which have free access to researchers, include:

  • An AI deep search tool that ingested the White House COVID-19 Open Research Dataset and several other licensed databases to help researchers query the data with questions such as "Which drugs have been used so far and what are the outcomes?"
  • An AI tool with 3,000 new, unique molecules containing COVID-related qualities to allow experts to explore and help identify desirable properties for potential COVID-19 therapeutics.
  • A cloud-based, interactive data repository that allows microbiologists and bioinformaticians to study more than 300 million genomic sequences, including more than 500 public genome sequences for COVID-19, presented at the Stanford HAI conference this week.
  • Free access to IBM Micromedex® and DynaMed®, a comprehensive search tool that provides evidence-based information aimed at understanding infectious diseases including COVID-19.

Weather Company Incidents Map. A new coronavirus tool launched on The Weather Channel mobile app and weather.com uses AI technology from IBM Watson to help users, families and communities track COVID-19 at the county level, which is more localized than many resources currently available. The tool provides trend graphs, interactive mapping and details on confirmed cases and deaths by state and county in the U.S. -- global data coming soon -- as well as the latest news and video, including public health information and testing center location. For those looking for a deeper data dive, IBM has also created a separate interactive dashboard, built on IBM Cognos Analytics, to help everyone from media organizations to data scientists conduct deeper analysis and filtering of regional data.

COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium. IBM’s Summit supercomputer is helping researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) identify drug compounds that could disable the coronavirus, just as IBM’s Blue Gene supercomputer played a major role in identifying breakthrough drugs and treatments a generation ago. In a situation like this where time is a critical factor, supercomputers can play a critical role through digital simulation. Summit is digitally simulating the virus growth, and IBM is helping DOE to get simulated results in 1 to 2 days -- a drastic improvement from the months that standard computing systems would have taken. Summit has already simulated more than 8,000 complicated compounds and identified 77 that government scientists said might warrant further study.

IBM, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, DOE, and others in the tech industry, government, and academia recently launched the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium, which uses the Summit supercomputer to bring forth an unprecedented amount of computing power to help researchers everywhere better understand COVID-19, its treatments, and potential cures.

IBM’s high-performance computing systems allow researchers to run very large numbers of calculations in epidemiology, bioinformatics, and molecular modeling. These experiments would take years to complete if worked by hand, or months if handled on slower, traditional computing platforms.

Read more about the latest updates on this important initiative.

Intel

As part of its $50 million pandemic response technology initiative, Intel launched its COVID-19 Response and Readiness Initiative, which will provide funding to accelerate customer and partner advances in diagnosis, treatment and vaccine development, leveraging technologies such as artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, and edge-to-cloud service delivery.

The overall initiative will also support requests from external partners and employee-led relief projects, addressing critical needs in their communities.

Intel has also donated $10 million to support local communities during this critical time. Those donations include 1 million gloves, masks and other equipment for healthcare workers, $6 million from the Intel Foundation toward relief efforts in local communities, and $4 million from Intel and its subsidiaries around the globe.

Juniper Networks

Juniper Networks is offering a free secure “pop up Wi-Fi network” kit for any temporary COVID-19 testing facility. Initially available in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, this kit includes free Mist wireless Access Points, cloud-hosted operations with an AI-driven network and an SRX firewall (with PoE, DHCP and optional LTE uplink) to ensure a secure and reliable connection that can be set up quickly and easily. This kit is available to any healthcare facility looking to quickly deploy a secure and reliable wireless network in response to the COVID-19 crisis. More information on the terms of the offer can be found here.

Additionally, Juniper Networks' global services team is prioritizing any and all support for medical, healthcare and/or senior care customers with free premium support services. This includes priority expert-to-expert technical support; priority RMA, logistics and parts handling; as well as entitlement support. Any customer in these industries will be fully supported even if they don’t have an active support or maintenance contract. More information is available here.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is providing unique and free offerings to hospital, supply chains, supermarkets, freight delivery services and disaster relief nonprofits to support them with critical hiring needs. Specifically:

  • LinkedIn in offering three months of free job postings to hospitals, clinics and essential businesses, such as supermarkets, package delivery and warehousing companies. Members with relevant skills will discover these jobs through push notifications, real-time alerts, in the LinkedIn feed, and in job search. Organizations in these sectors can start posting jobs today. The company will help drive the LinkedIn members with the skills to fill those jobs by tagging these jobs as urgent and bringing them front and center on the LinkedIn homepage and in its jobs homepage.
  • In response to feedback from healthcare staffing firms about the tools they need to identify critical healthcare professionals efficiently, LinkedIn is offering access to LinkedInTalent Insights for free for the next three months to give them access to real-time data and insights on the talent market.
  • LinkedIn is expanding its Recruiting for Good program to help nonprofits and relief organizations find talent. LinkedIn recruiters will volunteer their time to help organizations fill critical volunteer and full-time positions to support COVID-19 response.
  • LinkedIn has also increased the number of LinkedIn Learning courses (50 and a few more coming) available to the public as individuals are seeking to navigate career strategies in the current job market.
  • Finally, LinkedIn has launched a microsite where individuals can look for jobs, employers can find talent, and organizations can find volunteers. Members can access a set of resources for information and to assistance.

This document outlines a number of other ways LinkedIn has leveraged its platform to help members, customers, and governments since the coronavirus emerged, including

LinkedIn sends a “Daily Rundown” which is a summary of the day’s news that is written and curated by experienced journalists. The “US Daily Rundown” is distributed to over 47 million individuals in 96 countries and 9 languages. They are written and curated by a global team of 74 experienced journalists who create, curate, and cultivate content. Members receive this in the form of a notification. This notification contains a link that redirects members to LinkedIn’s official page for the coronavirus which contains information and the most recent updates from verified and official sources, such as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the World Health Organization (WHO), and other trustworthy news sources.

Microsoft

In addition to helping learners, instructors, and businesses use Teams, communities and health care providers can use Teams in their COVID-19 response, too. For Teams, St. Luke’s University Health Network is rolling out a telemedicine system enabled by Teams that will allows clinicians to conduct virtual visits with older patients who are vulnerable to the virus.

Microsoft Healthcare Bot provides the ability to quickly create a bot that helps customers meet their healthcare compliance requirements, and to surface in websites and other channels. The Healthcare Bot visual design tools allow easy customization of workflows and modification as the situation evolves and Microsoft has released a Healthcare Bot template for COVID-19 community interaction and initial triage. Healthcare Bot is priced based on messages generated by bot interactions. Microsoft is creating a 6-month free tier program for approved customers for COVID use cases. The Microsoft Services Disaster Recovery (MSDR) team has organized and deployed a COVID-19 Task Force (TF) to provide technical assistance to healthcare organizations and governments around the world. Providence Health System is using Microsoft’s Healthcare Bot service to engage with and triage community members, including referring them to virtual care for COVID-19. The Healthcare Bot also includes a COVID-19 Triage Template using CDC protocols which other frontline organizations are customizing and deploying to meet their needs.

Oracle

Oracle has been actively engaged in the ongoing fight against COVID-19. Its primary goal has been to develop and deploy a series of cloud applications that will gather the data necessary to enable health professionals to answer one critical question: What drugs are effective in treating or preventing the COVID-19 virus?

The Oracle Cloud is running clinical trials to test the safety and effectiveness of dozens of different COVID-19 drugs and vaccines. These trials span many countries and hundreds of institutional sites. Oracle’s newest cloud system, named Clinical One, enables institutions to start-up a clinical trial in as little as two weeks, much quicker than ever before.

Oracle's Cloud Infrastructure also powers the cloud-based CoVPN Volunteer Screening Registry, which the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and pharmaceutical company Moderna are registering hundreds of thousands of volunteers for the largest clinical trial to date of their jointly developed COVID-19 vaccine.

In addition to gathering data from COVID-19 clinical trials, Oracle has built and donated to the U.S. government a COVID-19 Therapeutic Learning System that allows physicians and patients to record the effectiveness of promising COVID-19 drug therapies.

The Oracle Therapeutic Learning System lets the physician record the patient's daily progress, collecting real-world patient data to help discover which new drugs are most effective against COVID-19, their optimal dosages, and how early in the disease progression the drugs need to be administered.

The Therapeutic Learning System was the result of a collaboration with U.S. agencies including the National Institute of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Oracle donated the use of the its Therapeutic Learning System to HHS as part of an ongoing partnership to collect real-time medical data related to COVID-19.The system is currently available to every physician in the United States at covid19.oracle.com.

SAP

Supply Chain Management. SAP wants to help ensure that your supply chain remains unbroken. With free access to SAP Ariba Discovery, you can post your sourcing needs and get quick responses from suppliers who can deliver – from all across the world. Minimize shipment delays and respond to consumer demand. Connect now here.

XM Solutions. The public is overwhelmed regarding COVID-19. Qualtrics has developed solutions to help public institutions and businesses understand and respond to the needs of their communities. From an online, guided COVID-19 pre-screen questionnaire to K-12 and Higher Education Remote Learning Pulses to a Customer Confidence Pulse, all available now for free. Learn more.

Samsung

Samsung continues its community outreach by donating $4.3 million in COVID-19 relief to local partners in neighborhoods where a majority of its U.S. employees live and work. These donations build upon its global efforts to date, which now surpass $33 million. To support local needs in the states with its largest workforces - California, New Jersey, and Texas - Samsung will donate $1 million to each of the following locations: New Jersey (New Jersey Pandemic Relief Fund), California (Silicon Valley Strong, MedShare, Second Harvest Food Bank), North Texas (United Way of Metropolitan Dallas), and Central Texas (All Together ATX, Central Texas Food Bank).

In addition to supporting Samsung’s global workforce, to date, Samsung has donated $29 million worth of funds and goods to governments and communities that have been most affected by COVID-19 to help with their relief efforts, including the purchase of medical supplies and hygiene kits, such as face masks. To continue to support customers, Samsung is offering round-the-clock customer care at Samsung.com and extending manufacturer warranties.

More details can be found at the Samsung U.S. Newsroom.

ServiceNow

ServiceNow does business with about 80 percent of the Fortune 500 companies and many governments at the state, federal and global level. It is offering its customers a community portal where customers can interact with other customers to share ideas and best practices for how they are using the Now Platform and workflows to manage through the COVID-19 situation. ServiceNow has also launched an Idea Portal on the Now Platform where customers and employees can provide feedback and learn from each other.

ServiceNow’s business continuity plan covers the ability for its business functions to work remotely in a safe and secure manner so they can continue to serve its customers. All remote access happens using secure connections and multifactor authentication and is in compliance with applicable regulations and corporate standards. Its teams use multiple software as a service (SaaS) tools for collaborations and virtual meetings.

To help companies and government implement critical workflows for emergency response and crisis management as they manage through the COVID-19 crises, ServiceNow is making four free, open-sourced apps available. They will remain free throughout the virus crisis.

ServiceNow’s customer support team will support the four, free, open-sourced apps they are making available to help business and government manage through the COVID-19 virus.

The apps are:

  • Emergency Response Operations - This app was created on the Now Platform by Washington State’s Department of Health to manage their own COVID-19 situation, and they are donating it for use by other organizations and public agencies. This app supports operational processes of emergency response and preparedness at the state and local government level. It helps optimize resources and staff in critical locations, and follows federal regulations required for emergency funding and reimbursement.
  • Emergency Outreach – During a crisis, this workflow uses a mobile app to help companies connect with employees and assess the impact on their employees. Employers can reach out by email or push notification to provide information and safety measures and get a response to confirm if employees are safe, and where they are located.
  • Emergency Self Report - This workflow helps an employee notify their employer that they are going into quarantine. A workflow helps the employee safely return to work.
  • Emergency Exposure Management - When an employee has been diagnosed with an illness, this workflow helps the employer identify other people who might have been exposed based on the employee’s meetings and location. In addition, ServiceNow sells a number of other Business Continuity Management applications to its customers who use the Now Platform.

Additional resources can be found here or at www.servicenow.com.

Snap, Inc.

Provide resources for Snapchat community. Snap launched a worldwide filter with advice on staying safe with links to the World Health Organization website, as well as other filters that provide ideas to address immediate priorities about reducing risk, social distancing, and helping Snap’s audience stay connected. Snap has also partnered with mental health experts to have creative tools in-app to help mitigate anxiety surrounding COVID-19. Of particular note is Snap’s new section on its “Here For You” mental health portal, which provides access to resources from experts on how to stay safe.

Help spread awareness. Snap has created a channel in Discover with COVID-19 information called “Coronavirus: Stop the Spread,” which features community aggregated Stories about how people are dealing with working from home. It has also launched a “COVID-19 Myth Busting” trivia game that appears as an interactive filter over the self-facing camera views for users to learn from, creative tools in 30 languages—which include Bitmoji stickers and filters with health tips, global Snap Maps explore Public Service Announcement on Android devices (localized to 41 languages), and is working with international governments to raise Public Health awareness campaigns, including fielding requests from the UK, France, Denmark, and Sweden.

In addition, Snap launched a new augmented reality donation experience, using Snapchat Lenses to bring awareness to the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund for the World Health Organization. The tool creates an easy pathway for users to learn about the Fund and make a donation. It allows users to scan 23 international currency notes across 33 countries, bringing up an AR visualization of how donations support the WHO’s response efforts to track the spread of virus, ensure patients get the care they need, and provide frontline workers with critical supplies. Learn more.

Ensure Snap has highest quality news about COVID-19. Snap has a dedicated coronavirus channel featuring content from authoritative sources from around the globe, including the French Government Taskforce on COVID-19, the UK’s National Health Service, WHO, and CDC, among others. Snap is also partnering with global media who are providing constant coverage related to coronavirus. Snap’s news team is regularly working to produce content and updating the Discover page in the app with information related to COVID-19, including question-and-answer sessions with medical experts.

Giving back to those in need. Snap has donated to Direct Relief to deliver protective gear to frontline workers in China and will match employee donations up to $10,000 USD for donations to COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund (WHO), Doctors Without Borders, Blessings in a Backpack, and Donors Choose (Keep Kids Learning).

Twilio

As the global government, health, and nonprofit communities work together to stop the spread of COVID-19, Twilio is working with businesses, non-profits, and government agencies to help people affected by the virus and keep each other safe.

Here are four ways that public services, health organizations, and NGOs are using Twilio to improve their COVID-19 response initiatives:

  • Reduce Public Health Hotline Backlogs and Wait Times: No one likes to wait for answers to questions regarding health issues, especially when there is a lot of uncertainty and conflicting information circulating the internet about COVID-19. The most efficient organizations use Interactive Voice Response (IVR), chatbots, and artificial intelligence to understand if an inbound request should receive an automated response. For instance, repeated questions like, “How do I keep my family safe?” could receive automated answers. More specific or complex conversations typically require the personal attention of a staff member with specialized training. For example, your organization may need to escalate a call to video to remotely screen patients who self-identify as showing symptoms of the virus. Deploying automated chatbots and other self-service capabilities to share public service information and answer frequently asked questions will put the right information in the hands of citizens faster and more efficiently, while freeing specialists to tackle the complex requests only they can handle. That means faster service for everyone. Many health organizations look to this technology to field common questions about COVID-19. To make adopting AI-powered chatbots faster and easier, Twilio has created a chatbot template based on the World Health Organization's COVID-19 FAQ. If you are a public health agency, hospital, or health-focused nonprofit and would like access to this COVID-19 chatbot template, contact Twilio here.
  • Combat Misinformation About the Virus with Proactive Alerts: All you have to do is look to your local grocery store pantry aisle or review local event cancellations to see that people are concerned about COVID-19. Much of this concern is stemming from uncertainty about which information to believe and speculation about how the crisis will progress. The World Health Organization (WHO) has referred to the harmful spread of misinformation about the virus as an “infodemic.” Proactive SMS, voice, and email notifications enable organizations to keep their constituents up to date on the latest information based on trusted sources of public health. As a trusted government, health or nonprofit organization, when you deliver information directly from your organization into the hands of the people who need it most, you will help cut through the fog of unfiltered speculation.
  • Reach More People in Affected Areas by Using Preferred Communication Channels: Effective containment of the virus is largely dependent on providing everyone in Coronavirus-affected areas with the right trusted information to protect themselves and their families. This requires delivering your message over channels where end-users in need of assistance prefer to communicate. For instance, some users prefer using SMS while others like email, making phone calls, engaging in video consultations, or conversing with automated chatbots. Often, the urgency of the situation dictates how a person would like to be engaged. It’s best practice to ask your customers and community what channels they prefer whenever possible and ensure you’re respecting their preferences during your outreach. While many organizations offer phone systems, adding video, SMS and chat options can make your service more accessible to more people. The retail and technology industries deploy this omnichannel approach to drive up customer satisfaction, and organizations addressing public health can utilize the same technology and tactics to grow the number of people you can serve.
  • Automate Patient Appointment Reminders and Scheduling: If you are treating people who need assistance, you likely incur a large operational burden around managing their appointments. One of the most effective ways Twilio has seen public and health organizations use technology to lower operational expenses is by automating this process. You can set up reminders via email, text, and/or voice to reduce no shows and ensure that appointment slots which are canceled can be offered to others. Many organizations also offer a text in option to schedule appointments in the first place. For organizations working with populations outside of the U.S, adding WhatsApp beyond SMS is another great way to ensure you’re reaching your patients where they are and driving high participation rates in appointments.
  • For non-profits and social impact organizations, Twilio.org offers benefits through its Impact Access Program. More information is available here. For government agencies, Twilio's services are available for acquisition with discounts through its resell partner’s GSA Schedule 70 and other contracting vehicles.

Additional Resources:

Contact: coronavirus@twilio.com.

Twitter

Twitter’s mission is to serve the public conversation. As part of that mission, Twitter has deployed its Crisis Response operation to address the evolving challenges posed by COVID-19. This work includes ensuring the people who use Twitter have access to credible sources of information, assisting public health and relief efforts, and supporting its workforce.

Providing Access to Credible Information:

  • Launched in January, Twitter has updated its COVID-19 Search Prompt to 64 countries in 20 languages — partnering with the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) in the United States, and similar institutions in other countries — to ensure that when the public comes to the service for information about COVID-19, they are met with credible, authoritative content at the top of their search experience.
  • Twitter is prioritizing an Event Page at the top of users’ Home Timeline and in the “For You” section of the Explore tab in more than 22 markets that features trustworthy information to help customers stay informed with timely updates about COVID-19.
  • Twitter is providing advertising credits for NGOs to elevate public health campaigns.
  • Twitter has an internal, cross-functional task force designated to enforcing its platform manipulation policies.
  • Twitter continues to blue badge verify official government accounts, expert organizations, health professionals, and epidemiologists in local markets.
  • Twitter will halt any attempt by advertisers to opportunistically use the COVID-19 outbreak to target inappropriate ads, based on its Inappropriate Content Policy.

As a uniquely open service, Twitter data from the public API is being used in research every day and the research hub is publicly available. Through a partnership with the UN Global Pulse Lab, agencies such as UNICEF and WHO can access Twitter’s Enterprise API to conduct further public health research. Twitter continues to partner with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the CDC to create and elevate engaging, authoritative content on Twitter, such as Twitter Q&As that utilize pro publisher tools.

VMware

Tools to Promote Business Continuity Through Unexpected Events. Isolating employees to reduce the risk of disease spread doesn’t mean the end of productivity, in fact, moving toward a remote-first strategy now, can leave your organization stronger than before. VMware offers tools to help create a productive and secure environment for employees to thrive from anywhere. Learn more here.

Contributions to Coronavirus Relief Fund and International Relief Efforts: VMwareFoundation intends to contribute a total of $1M, which includes $500,000 to GlobalGiving’s Coronavirus Relief Fund, supporting various humanitarian needs in affected communities and $500,000 to TechSoup’s COVID-19 Response Fund, building on our ongoing partnership and enabling the technology needs of nonprofit social service providers. VMware is also amplifying the contributions of its individual employees by matching gifts to registered NGOs for disaster relief.

Release of Cyber Smart Index in APAC to Promote Cybersecurity Strategies During COVID-19 Crisis: With the COVID-19 pandemic, governments, businesses and citizens are relying on the internet more than ever to keep our world going. As citizens worldwide rapidly change the way they interact at home, at work and at school via the internet, cloud, software, apps and smartphones, cyber security is critical to prevent and protect us all from attacks. COVID-19 is driving a higher reliance on remote work and the digital economy. VMware commissioned Deloitte Access Economics to examine cyber exposure and preparedness among Asia Pacific (APAC) nations, and to gauge the potential digital opportunity from cyber investment in a Cyber Smart Index entitled “Cyber Smart: Enabling APAC.”

Supporting Educational Institutions in APAC in Transition to Remote Learning: At VMware’s APJ headquarters in Singapore, the company is working with the government on its commitment to equip all students with digital devices by 2028 (announced in budget), on “smart campuses” at universities and via Singapore’s smart nation initiatives. In Australia, as a result of coronavirus, the international education industry has faced disruption to international student enrollments. VMware’s cross-functional team is addressing this challenge by working via the Council of Australasian University Directors of Information Technology to help institutions that do not have the digital preparedness of larger universities.

Helping to Develop COVID-19 and Public Health Apps in APJ: While these projects are still being held in confidence, VMware is working on health apps across APJ that assist in educating citizens about COVID-19 and in turn assist health authorities in flattening the curve.

Enabling 2000+ Australian Healthcare Healius Remote Employees to Access Core Business Services and Systems Within 48 Hours: With the current COVID-19 pandemic, organizations including Healius are working on ways to deliver access to corporate resources while employees work from home during isolation periods. With the help from the VMware team, Healius has been able to implement a solution based on Horizon Cloud on Azure to deploy at scale virtual desktop infrastructure to enable their staff to work remotely. The customer requested a Horizon Cloud Tenant on Friday morning and VMware delivered the entire end-to-end solution within 48 hours to meet their business objectives and enable their user base of 2000+ remote employees to access core business services and systems.

Enabling 1,000 Key Healthcare Workers with Critical Apps in a Week in Catalonia, Spain: CTTI is the Catalonian Regional Government agency in Spain that centralizes all of the telecommunication and information technology resources for the different regional public entities in the region, providing its management, coordination and modernization . As part of the response to the COVID-19 crisis, CTTI contacted VMware and Fujitsu with the urgent need to guarantee business continuity for its healthcare services. VMware and Fujitsu provided a solution that allowed 1,200 key healthcare professionals to have immediate access to these critical applications.

Onboarding 1,000 Employees at ACI Informatica Over Three Days Amidst Pandemic: VMwarehelped Italy’s ACI Informatica onboard more than a thousand employees in three days, enabling smart working with the Horizon platform.


Industry Partner

The technology industry is working together to make sure communities have the tools, information, and guidance they need to cope with this crisis. Find additional resources from our industry partner:

Tech At Work — Coronavirus Resources