Page 71 - FCW, November/December 2019

FCWPerspectives
The obstacles to
automation
As RPA moves from buzzword to practical applications, agency leaders say it’s forcing broader discussions about business operations
FCW gathered a group of government experts to discuss the challenges involved in adopting automation. Those hurdles include convoluted business processes, a wary workforce and an incomplete understanding of how
best to use the technology. Participants agreed, however, that automation is essential to a customer-centric, digital government.
The discussion was on the record but not for individual attribution, and the quotes have been edited for length and clarity. Here’s what the group had to say.
Why RPA? And why now?
“In my previous agency, RPA primar- ily was focused on improving docu- mentation audit and workflow compli- ance,” one participant said. “Let’s say you have a series of legal requirements that must be met and you have mil- lions of documents. Certain documents require a subject-matter expert to look at the workflow, match it with federal government regulations and ensure that the particular scenario actually applies. How do you automate that? That’s where RPA meets artificial intelligence. RPA is just the start, but then it blossoms into a new innovative discovery.”
“We’ve been focused on ways to improve the stability and security of our systems — how we can eliminate some of the challenges with human error,” another executive said. “Once
we’ve automated those things, we’ll be able to reinvest the resources that we’re currently using to maintain the systems and focus them outwardly on how to improve the solutions that are coming in.”
Participants acknowledged that automation has taken off in the past few years, though they had a num- ber of explanations for why that has happened.
One said: “I think the engagement, collaboration and communication among the CXO community is key so that we look at things not just through a frame of reference of financials, acquisi- tion or IT, but how do you cross-collab- orate to get meaningful outcomes? This is the thinking behind the cross-agency priority goals and shared services. We’re looking at how we can do IT modern- ization from the whole-of-government
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