Fedweek

Image: Mark Van Scyoc/Shutterstock.com

Among the initiatives in the Trump administration’s new strategic plan to carry out its President’s Management Agenda provisions on federal employees is to increase automation and “reskill” employees for different work.

“Although the impact of machine assistance varies by occupation, the use of automation has the potential to provide employees with time to focus on more important work. Reskilling and redeployment strategies may be required to shift staff time to higher value duties,” it says.

The document estimates that with current technology, 5 percent of federal occupations could be automated entirely, 60 percent could have 30 percent or more of their duties automated, and 45 percent of total federal work activities could be automated.

The document does not give examples of occupations or duties most suitable for automation, although an earlier budget proposal did say there is potential for more use of artificial intelligence in “transactional” tasks such as “documenting and recording paper¬work, evaluating information to determine compliance, monitoring resources, and responding to routine ques-tions.”

Within the next 12 months, OMB and OPM are to: identify three areas “most suited for automation, then pilot these automations” to show cost savings and return on investment; develop a “reskilling plan that would identify both ways to provide employees impacted by automation to do other work and identify skills needed in the future”; and pilot an “assessment for high demand skills that can be used for reskilling existing employees.”