As federal agencies look to become more efficient in their business processes and maintain quality while reducing costs, robotic process automation (RPA) continues to be a key component. While RPA implementations offer many benefits, including reduced costs, improved efficiencies, and better service delivery, the journey to successful implementation of automation is strategic, not magic.
Having worked with federal agencies, my team and I have identified best practices for effectively using automation for complex government operations. Deploying RPA requires the integration of appropriate technology alongside change management practices and improvement-oriented team resources. The strategic convergence of technology, processes, and people is instrumental to project success. Let’s take a closer look at some of our best practices and implementation examples.
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.
One 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.
Prioritize and plan for ongoing process and technology evaluation
Benefits like those achieved in the example above can save organizations tens of thousands of dollars or more and countless labor hours annually. To realize these savings, agencies will need a carefully planned approach to automation deployment for the initial rollout and for ideation around ongoing innovation.
We establish this balance by integrating technology, processes, and people to inform appropriate change management practices, including:
- Opening the lines of communication with teams to share information about the opportunities that RPA will usher in while addressing concerns about how roles and responsibilities may shift
- Giving team members an opportunity to increase their understanding and skill with RPA innovation over time to improve long-term success with automation technology adoption
- Setting expectations around the use of new automation tools
- Defining how team members will meet those expectations
- Establishing processes for routine human evaluation of RPA bot performance, quality, and efficiency
- Setting intervals to evaluate RPA integration effectiveness and deploy humans to resolve unforeseen issues and assess new opportunities
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
To be successful, agencies need to consider a range of factors, from their people and processes to their culture, in order to successfully integrate RPA. Once these are in place, they can identify the best RPA use cases that will realize efficiencies and drive quality gains. 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.
For federal agencies looking to improve service delivery and drive efficiency, the incorporation of RPA technology into mission-critical operations should happen without question and without delay. By taking a holistic approach, one that recognizes that modern, complex operations require a seamless interweaving of both humans and technology to optimize effectiveness, and working in partnership with a technology expert will drive mission success over time and prepare the agency and its workforce for an AI-powered future.
This article originally appeared on Government Technology Insider. View the content here.
The author, Patrick Pinnell, is Vice President of Operations for Federal Services at Maximus.