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when it comes to managing complex cybersecurity situations or identifying fraud cases.
START AUTOMATING
Getting into the world of intelligent automation is relatively easy.
RPA tools are affordable and
offer significant ways to improve performance and reduce the burden of back-office operations. Reasoning cognitive automation is more expensive and takes more time to implement, but also offers the biggest potential return on investment.
The integration of big data and cognitive automation can have a significant impact on an agency’s business processes and the agency as whole. It brings together massive amounts of diverse, unstructured data, and offers almost limitless alternatives and hypotheses to quickly form cognitive conclusions that humans on their own could not.
The first step is for agencies to choose the right tool for the job.
Pick a particular process to automate, develop a proof of concept around that, and start small. Then gradually scale across the enterprise and move toward automating more complex processes and creating a center of excellence.
Don’t underestimate the importance of culture and governance issues either, particularly if your organiza- tion has plans to expand its use of intelligent automation on a broader scale. Both the CIO and functional leaders from the business side of the organization should have a seat at the table. This is not simply a technology solution, but an approach that directly impacts business outcomes.
Agencies should communicate what these changes will mean to their work- force as well. Let staff know how intel- ligent automation will create new roles
and positions for automation process specialists and help them focus more on value added, strategic tasks.
MOMENTUM IS GROWING
Many government programs have already embraced intelligent automa- tion tools. Early indications show these technologies improving employ- ee satisfaction. For example, KPMG recently worked with a U.S. health
complex cognitive processing will become more common over the next few years as its role in government and the business world evolves.
Intelligent automation will change the landscape of an agency’s back office functions. It will likely affect front office functions as well, but
it will happen incrementally. Over time, it’s possible the fields of accounting, procurement, logistics,
“Intelligent automation can help agencies deliver better performance and greater accountability for less.”
care agency to deploy automation to improve the efficiency and quality
of its data collection processes. As a result, certain employees were able to focus on more mission-focused and customer-facing roles.
There are other examples of agen- cies using intelligent automation, ranging from the mundane to the complex. For example, the General Services Administration is using a chat bot to onboard new employees, the NIH is using cognitive computing to help it determine where to spend research money, and the FDA is auto- mating certain data sets.
Awareness of intelligent automation is growing among agencies. This is partly because they can see tangible results in the short term as they automate simple tasks. Agencies can accomplish much of this without having to distract core IT resources from enterprise-wide endeavors. More
and human resources management may transform completely.
Intelligent automation can help agencies deliver better performance and greater accountability for less. Be thoughtful and engage the rest of the organization to carry these initiatives forward. Most importantly, lay
the groundwork for a wider transformation within an agency.
Kirke Everson, Government Intelligent Automation Lead at KPMG LLP. Everson will be speaking at KPMG’s Government Intelligent Automation Forum on June 6 in Washington, DC.
This article represents the views of the author only, and not necessarily the views or professional advice of KPMG LLP. The KPMG name and logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of KPMG International.
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