“Robotic process automation technology has been helping agencies to speed up their work, make processes more efficient and allow workers to focus on higher-value work. That has become especially apparent as a wide range of agencies have shifted parts of their missions to respond to the coronavirus.”
“The bots have been used for a variety of tasks, including data collection, data analysis and tracking employee availability. RPA allows organizations to automate certain repetitive tasks — often mundane and tedious work that users do not want to spend much time doing.”
“RPA has been taking hold across the entire government over the past few years. For example, the Defense Logistics Agency has been using RPA to help it respond to Freedom of Information Act requests. The General Services Administration has an ambitious goal in mind for 2020 and beyond when it comes to RPA: It aims to help civilian agencies free up nearly $1 billion worth of productive time across government by using the technology.”
“However, agencies are moving with greater urgency on RPA projects in response to COVID-19.”
CDC, GSA Use RPA to Aid Response
“Microsoft announced on March 20 that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is using Microsoft’s Healthcare Bot chat service to enable its own COVID-19 assessment bot. The Microsoft bot runs on the company’s Azure cloud platform.”
“The CDC’s bot ‘can quickly assess the symptoms and risk factors for people worried about infection, provide information and suggest a next course of action such as contacting a medical provider or, for those who do not need in-person medical care, managing the illness safely at home,’ Microsoft says in a blog post…”
“Meanwhile, the GSA has deployed a new RPA bot to ‘speed up collection of infection count data in counties where it manages federal buildings,’ FedScoop reports…”
CMS Deploys RPA to Help with Telework
“Other departments are also increasing their usage of RPA. The Department of Homeland Security has now deployed about 500 bots to perform coronavirus-related data analysis, according to VentureBeat.”
“The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Food and Drug Administration are using RPA to help workers engaged in telework, according to FedScoop. They are aiding IT teams with tasks such as patch management and call center support…” Read the full article here.
Source: How Agencies Are Making New Use of RPA – By Phil Goldstein, April 14, 2020. FedTech Magazine.
