As federal agencies look to become more efficient, RPA takes center stage

This thought leadership article was originally featured on Government Technology Insider.

As federal agencies look to boost efficiencies while reducing costs, robotic process automation (RPA) continues to be a key component. While RPA implementations offer many benefits, the journey to successful implementation of automation is strategic, not magic.

Deploying RPA requires the integration of appropriate technology alongside change management practices and improvement-oriented team resources—a strategic convergence of technology, processes, and people that bolsters project success. Let’s take a closer look at some of our best practices.

Leverage RPA for measurable efficiency and quality gains

Federal agencies are looking to optimize operations, streamline processes, and deliver ongoing innovation. Doing so will help enable gains in effectiveness and quality as well.

A key example is our RPA implementation for a federal agency where the technology efficiently handles the equivalent workload of approximately 128 full-time employees (FTEs) annually. The project has effectively delivered efficiencies by decreasing the need for new hires and lowering program costs significantly. Notably, the program’s quality assurance (QA) scores, while already high, increased further after RPA implementation. This was due to RPA reducing the opportunity for human error as well as increasing program effectiveness realized by the increased time available for higher-impact mission priorities.

Identify the best processes for automation opportunities

Defining automation use cases and understanding expected benefits and ROI is important to choosing appropriate solutions and ensuring their successful integration. In all cases, the project scale and process complexity will drive the final roadmap. In advising federal agencies, we consider:

• Projects with high-volume daily or weekly transactions can see great benefit and a reduction in labor hours from solutions to automate simple processes, such as sending a form email.
• Projects with few interactions may also benefit from RPA solutions to automate simple tasks, though in these cases, the primary benefit will be improved work-life for team members rather than significant reductions in labor hours.
• Complex processes with variable outcomes and multiple steps and input sources can benefit from advanced RPA solutions, including AI agents and agentic systems. These automations can reduce labor hours both initially and at scale.
• Processes with a high number of frequently repeated steps and a low need for human decision-making are particularly good candidates for RPA.

Focus on long-term automation possibilities 

Looking to the future of automation beyond RPA will enable organizations to plan for possibilities to improve service delivery and efficiency by integrating emerging agentic AI systems, AI agents, and generative AI technologies. These capabilities offer the potential to add further intelligence, autonomy, and adaptability to process execution and management. Through hands-on experience with these AI tools, our teams are automating and orchestrating end-to-end business processes, developing workflow design, data extraction, and uncovering the art of the possible for an AI-powered future.

Leverage knowledgeable partners to drive mission outcomes 

At a time when so much of the technology is new and the understanding about how RPA can drive the mission forward, working with knowledgeable partners is imperative. The right partner acts as a success multiplier, leveraging the unique knowledge of agency personnel about the most important use cases and the partner’s expertise in the best technology to support mission success.