In a recent post on its official blog, the government’s administrative arm called for the formation of a “community of practice” (CoP) to explore opportunities to leverage robotic process automation (RPA) throughout the vast breadth of the U.S. federal government. The General Services Administration, an independent agency of the U.S. government, helps manage and support the basic functioning of the enormous federal bureaucracy. The CoP, which was announced this spring, will be chaired by Ed Burrows, GSA RPA program manager in the GSA’s Office of the chief financial officer.
Burrows, who authored the post announcing the CoP, said it will enable federal government leaders to share ideas and collaborate on how RPA can be implemented in many government agencies. He said RPA would enable the GSA to re-engineer and improve processes, complete more work with fewer resources, and reduce costs, processing errors and process cycle times.
“With the advancements in emerging technology, it’s important for the federal government to capitalize on technological solutions in order to obtain the benefits of cost-effectively automating manual, repetitive, and rule-based operations,” Burrows said. “Many agencies are currently piloting RPA or already have bots in production, but so much more can be learned, accomplished, and shared with the collective efforts of industry and government.”