By Mark Hogenmiller – When it comes to government deployments of automation and AI/ML, the spotlight often shines brightest on high profile applications – whether it’s augmenting soldier performance on the battlefield, driving intelligence gathering or modernizing the delivery of citizen services.

For that reason, it’s easy to miss a transformation underway in the “back offices” of Defense Department and civilian agencies, where adoption of Robotic Process Automation is soaring.

RPA technology instructs a virtual software robot to mimic human actions in order to automate mundane, repetitive, manual-heavy tasks. Ideal automation candidates include processes that are highly standardized with electronic data inputs, such as streamlining data collection and processing, document management, identity verification and automatically responding to information requests from citizens.

A 2021 survey underwritten by UiPath found that 6 in 10 federal respondents — and half of state respondents — view RPA as a building block to harnessing artificial intelligence and machine learning, by accelerating data gathering and improving data quality. Why? For starters, RPA has the lowest cost to entry in the Intelligent Automation space and provides high rates of returns when implemented correctly.

RPA and the use of intelligent bots are proving critical for agencies seeking to automate time-consuming manual processes required to run a government agency. For agencies evaluating RPA, it is critical to first identify which processes are best suited for automation – a decision in large part driven by the impact on the amount of time, money, and frustration saved with a new solution. Read On: