Fortunately, advances in process automation and AI are giving government agencies new capabilities to identify system bottlenecks and streamline business and operations processes in ways that can improve business and mission outcomes in a fraction of the time and cost of traditional IT modernization projects.

Today’s business process mining and automation tools allow “executives to shift their dependence on outsourced knowledge to in-house control for continuous problem-solving,” according to Todd Schroeder, formerly a U.S. Department of Agriculture IT systems chief who is now vice president for public sector at UiPath. “That translates into a radically different time-to-value modernization quotient — and a radically lower cost structure,” he says in the report produced by Scoop News Group and underwritten by UiPath.

The report “How Automation and AI are Changing the Traditional Approach to Government IT Modernization” highlights how robotic process automation has evolved from a tool to streamline redundant tasks such as financial accounting work to what has increasingly become an enterprise-wide effort to improve mission outcomes.

One example cited in the report is the work underway at the USDA’s Intelligent Automation Center of Excellence office. The office is automating routine processes across the department and fostering a rising generation of “citizen developers” to automate work processes in individuals’ respective jobs.

The report also highlights how automation work that began in the Navy’s Financial Management and Comptroller’s Office is now expanding to improve operations in other Naval support offices and between different departments in government.

Schroeder says agency leaders are on the verge of realizing even greater capabilities with UiPath’s push into AI. UiPath’s AI Trust Layer platform, he says, provides customers with a new level of “auditability, traceability, observability, and replicability” when applying AI to business processes.

“This is the moment,” says Schroeder, “when agency leaders not only have the means to rethink how they modernize but reimagine how federal workers can accomplish their work in new and more effective ways. And that’s critical if the government is to catch up and meet the needs of society’s requirements.”

Download and read the full report.  

This article was produced by Scoop News Group for FedScoop and sponsored by UiPath.

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“Automation enables [the U.S.] Army to create new capabilities in legacy systems without investing resources into changing the underlying system,” said Raj G. Iyer, former CIO of the U.S. Department of the Army. Iyer was one of several government officials cited in the report, produced by Scoop News Group for FedScoop and sponsored by UiPath, who detailed how automation is making a significant difference in their organization.

Iyer, who stepped down from his position at the end of last month, explained how the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Financial Management and Comptroller) office recently completed a pilot program where robotic process automation (RPA) expedited the handling of unmatched financial transactions. The ASA (FM&C) office handles more than one million such transactions per year, according to Iyer. “RPA is expected to save millions of dollars in manual labor each year,” he said.

“I think that automation — specifically using bots — is really starting to take off and provide value to businesses,” added Krista Kinnard, chief of emerging technology in the CIO’s office at the U.S. Department of Labor.

Kinnard and others explained that automation isn’t just speeding up workflows but boosting productivity and improving agency services faster, at lower costs and with less risk than big-ticket IT modernization projects.

“Automation is moving from the edges, all the way inside into the enterprise. That’s a big change,” observed Sunil Madhugiri, chief technology officer at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, where approximately 250 automation “bots” are in production or under development, according to the report. Madhugiri highlighted one instance where automation helped CBP work with international airlines to notify and divert some 239,000 travelers from boarding U.S.-bound flights due to Covid restriction rules during the pandemic.

The report highlights how automation can effectively “operationalize” mission and business processes at federal agencies and deliver cost savings and service improvements that often prove elusive in IT modernization overhauls.

“Modernization has become synonymous with big, ‘rip-and-replace’ efforts, involving new systems, long-term physical transformations that are costly in technology, change management, workforce, opportunity cost, and time to value,” noted Mike Daniels, senior vice president, public sector at UiPath. “[Government agencies] have made huge investments to forklift systems to the cloud. But what’s gotten lost in that process is the need to examine whether those efforts drive a result quicker, faster or better.”

Todd Schroeder, a former chief of digital services at the U.S. Department of Agriculture who now serves at UiPath as public sector vice president, adds that automation platforms not only bring the power of scale to the work agency employees need to get done but can also address process pain points quickly. He cites in the report how the New York Department of Labor, despite a 10-fold increase in temporary staff, couldn’t keep up with demand for unemployment claims during the pandemic — and how deploying UiPath tools not only cut through the backlog but later helped save New York an estimated $12 billion in potential fraud.

Read the full report on how automation is helping government agencies improve mission services.

This article was produced by Scoop News Group for FedScoop and sponsored by UiPath.

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