“The COVID-19 pandemic rapidly necessitated agencywide telework at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.”
“To help keep its top officials abreast of employees’ statuses and conditions throughout the unprecedented disruption, the agency teamed up with UiPath to swiftly launch the CMS Employee Roll Call Bot.”
“’It was identified that there was no single source of information across the agency that provided complete personnel accountability data and provided a way to visually display the information to easily inform senior leaders,’ a CMS spokesperson recently told Nextgov regarding what prompted the agency’s pursuit of the new tool when COVID-19 hit. ‘The bot was quickly developed in conjunction with UiPath to maintain visibility of multiple aspects of personnel accountability during the pandemic.’”
“The official, as well as UiPath’s Vice President of Federal Chris Townsend briefed Nextgov on the agency’s newest robotic process automation and others in place, and the two also pinpointed how deploying automated technology can help heighten the federal workforce’s productivity and morale.”
“Townsend explained that as CMS was first coping with its new pandemic-induced teleworking reality earlier this year, the agency began discussing a range of RPA options with the tech company. The Centers’ senior leaders were particularly interested in leveraging an automated bot that could monitor its internal systems and identify cases where employees who are working remotely are forced to confront challenges with connectivity, communications or access to CMS’ systems. Essentially, the Roll Call Bot can catch indications that employees aren’t logging on or accessing appropriate systems—which Townsend noted ‘might be an indicator that they’re having a health issue…’”
“In the bot’s production, CMS senior leaders called for the inclusion of data that enveloped the number of employees teleworking, the number of employees on leave—either routine or sick—and the number of employees connecting to the agency network, according to its spokesperson. The tool provides a ‘daily report,’ the CMS official noted, which includes information at the agency level and also enables users to drill down to subordinate organizational levels for further insights…” Read the full article here.
Source: CMS Produces ‘Employee Roll Call Bot’ to Account for Workforce Amid Telework – By Brandi Vincent, June 1, 2020. Nextgov.
