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tive said. “If you just see technology, a lot of people will go after the shiny object in front of them. But a critical first step is looking at those processes and figuring out what shouldn’t be automated because not everything should be.”
“In my agency, we automated and digitized processes, but we never took the time to make sure those steps were no longer needed,” a different participant said. “We have tried to address it by having a dialogue about the process side of it and asking: ‘What are you trying to do with this? What do you get out of it? And is there another way you can do this?’”
The need to shift the conversation was a common theme. “Everybody says, ‘I want machine learning and AI,’” one noted. “But they don’t necessarily need that, and even if their problem is oriented to that solution, do they have the subject-matter expertise to take advantage of it? I spend 90% of my day governing the data because I want to give them authoritative, real data. Many people don’t understand that. They think just by putting AI on a bunch of data, it will clean itself up. But it won’t. We’ll just have bad AI projects.”
Addressing concerns about job security
The group was unanimous in the view that workforce trans- formation is a crucial part of modernization and that auto- mation cannot happen without employee buy-in.
“We talk about the fact that we can bring automation in and take the labor that we save and retrain the workforce,” one executive said. “The reality is that many employees don’t want to be retrained. I’ve got an employee who’s been in the agency for close to 60 years. If we take her tool away from her, the one she’s used every single day, and say, ‘We’re going to just push this button,’ she doesn’t like that idea.”
That executive offered a solution: “In my experience, if you show people how their lives could be improved and something could be done through RPA — that it would save them time, money and energy — then they become believers. But if you just tell them, ‘You need to do this,’ or just use the buzz terms, it doesn’t mean anything.”
Other participants said they’re discovering that their work- force needs are changing dramatically. “We’re trying to do things cheaper and more economically that don’t have a tail in terms of life cycle and cost,” one executive said. “So when we start to build these things, we have to hire people who can advance the technology. We’re doing a lot of cool stuff at our agency, and that attracts people and also allows them to become more marketable, which is good from a growth standpoint.”
Another executive said: “Of course, as people depart because they’re more marketable, now you have to fill their skills with potentially more advanced skills that get more money in the private sector. I’m running into battles with HR because I’m trying to bring people in with skills that have only existed for five years, and they’re the experts because
they’ve been doing it for the whole five years. But HR says, ‘Five years isn’t enough.’ They’re the only people who have these skills. How do you not pay them what everybody else is paying?”
“We talk about moving employees to high-value work, but how do you move that forward?” a third executive asked. “How do you address the fear and doubts and uncertainty and then start to actually change the processes and train the workforce to go to high-value work? When you’re going through a digital IT transformation, you have to spend some time and effort not just focusing on the technology we’re trying to implement, but also the people. You have to make sure you have leaders who will be able to carry that message forward.”
Another executive agreed, adding: “If we are going to change our culture, we’ll need strong leaders who buy into that change management and have the soft skills that are going to change the dynamics of how we operate in the future. And we’ll need ongoing transparency and collabora- tion between agencies and between mission areas to grapple with these challenges.” n
PERSPECTIVES
Participants
Jimmy Chen
Manager, Department of Veterans Affairs
Laurie Cook
Vice President, Public Sector Sales and Alliances, Blue Prism
Michael Fairless
Branch Chief, Securities and Exchange Commission
Marina Fox
DotGov Domain Services Program Manager, General Services Administration
Sanjay Gupta
CTO, Small Business Administration
Mark Krzysko
Director, Acquisition Data DASD(AE)/Acquisition Analytics and Policy, Department of Defense
Ranjeev Mittu
Branch Head, Naval Research Lab
Margaret Moon
Financial Analyst, National Science Foundation
Keith Nakasone
Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Acquisition, Office of Information Technology Category, Federal Acquisition Service, General Services Administration
John Powers
Associate Director, Information Security Oversight Office, National Archives and Records Administration
Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Harry Raduege
Senior Counselor,The Cohen Group
Howard Spira
CIO, Export-Import Bank of the United States
Theodore Woronka
Assistant Director, Finance and Administration, Department of the Interior
Note: FCW Editor-in-ChiefTroy K. Schneider led this roundtable discussion.The Sept. 11 gathering was underwritten
by Blue Prism, but both the substance of the discussion and the recap on these pages are strictly editorial products. Neither Blue Prism nor any of the roundtable participants had input beyond their Sept. 11 comments.
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