Over a year ago, back in April 2019, the General Services Administration (GSA) created a community of practice dedicated to exploring the potential of robotic process automation (RPA) technology within the federal government. This initiative aimed to facilitate collaboration among federal leaders, fostering the exchange of ideas and collective efforts to implement RPA effectively within their respective agencies.
The adoption of RPA in government had been steadily increasing for several years. The GSA set an ambitious goal for the year 2020 and beyond: to assist civilian agencies in reclaiming approximately $1 billion worth of productive time across the government through the utilization of this transformative technology.
However, the onset of the coronavirus pandemic led to a rapid acceleration in the adoption of RPA tools by government agencies. This surge was primarily driven by the imperative to enhance productivity and compensate for the limited physical presence of workers in offices due to stay-at-home orders. Some of these RPA bots even played a crucial role in responding to the pandemic. For instance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) employed an RPA bot to enable its COVID-19 assessment bot.
In the words of Stacy Dawn, senior adviser for cybersecurity and privacy at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, speaking in May according to Nextgov. “None of our job descriptions included tasks like ‘cut and paste, cut and paste, cut and paste.’ RPA is enabling us to shed these repetitive tasks. We want to harness our intellectual capabilities and boost productivity. Therefore, it empowers employees to feel more productive.”
GSA Aims to Spur RPA Adoption Across Government
As highlighted in the blog post by Burrows, many agencies are currently either piloting robotic process automation (RPA) or have RPA bots already in production. Burrows emphasizes that, given the advancements in emerging technology, it is imperative for the federal government to leverage these technological solutions to realize the benefits of cost-effective automation for manual, repetitive, and rule-based operations.
However, Burrows also underscores that there is significant untapped potential for agencies to harness the power of RPA through collaboration, both among agencies themselves and with industry partners. RPA presents an opportunity for agencies to shift from low-value to high-value work, aligning with one of the key cross-agency priority goals outlined in the President’s Management Agenda. An Office of Management and Budget memo from August 2018 specifically identifies RPA as a technology that can reduce the volume of repetitive administrative tasks performed by agencies.
Burrows further contends that RPA can deliver several advantages to agencies, such as enhancing and optimizing processes as they become automated, increasing the overall efficiency of existing operations, gradually reducing costs by enabling agencies to maintain work quality and assume new responsibilities without expanding their workforce, and mitigating errors and expenses associated with work delays.
In conclusion, Burrows suggests that by establishing a Robotic Process Automation Community of Practice (RPA CoP), the federal government can minimize duplication of efforts and streamline the implementation of RPA across various government agencies. This coordinated approach can help advance agency missions in the present and lay the foundation for future advancements.
Agencies Can Put Savings from RPA into Tech Modernization
To enable agencies to reinvest the savings generated through RPA, it is essential, as Kent pointed out in his remarks according to FedScoop, that they meticulously monitor the fiscal and workforce impacts of RPA implementation. These savings must be quantified and subsequently directed into a working capital fund, as authorized the 2017 Modernizing Government Technology Act.
As of an April report from the Government Accountability Office, only six agencies have established such working capital funds. These agencies include the Department of Education, the Department of Labor, the Department of the Treasury, the General Services Administration, the Small Business Administration, and the Social Security Administration.
Kent elaborated on this process, stating, “There’s a comprehensive framework in place for how these functions.” He further emphasized the need for precision in assessing how these benefits are generated and ensuring their accurate capture and subsequent reinvestment, as highlighted after the 2019 Department of Labor Tech Day, as reported by FedScoop.
Last month at UiPath Public Sector meet, Mitch Winans, a special assistant in the agency’s procurement office, said that IRS has deployed RPA tools that will help run compliance checks before contracts are awarded, saving the agency up to 18,000 hours saved annually through these bots. This was the first of its kind RPA built in the federal government which got excitement to leverage RPA’s across federal agencies. Mitch thanked Anika Systems intelligent automation team who built the solution 4 months ahead of delivery schedule.
Robert Zebroski, program manager for RPA in the Defense Logistics Agency’s Information Operations department, says that because RPA software mimics human actions to accomplish computer-based activities, it enables “employees to spend more time on higher-value tasks.”
DLA, which provides logistical support to the military, uses RPA to more efficiently respond to Freedom of Information Act requests, Deloitte played a key role DLA’s digital transformation journey in finance and other aspects of its operations.
“At DLA, we define it as an important technology that automates manual, repetitive tasks, returning valuable time to our knowledge workers while speeding up supply chain management practices and furthering our culture of innovation,” he says.