GSA said it is expanding into areas such as optical character recognition. Image: Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffIn a blog posting, the GSA has touted the value it has found in its own implementation of robotic process automation, saying it has “built automations that have improved processes in acquisition, finance, human resources, COVID-19 response, customer experience and more.”
Those improvements have enabled employees “to optimize and streamline processes, reduce errors and redirect the time that would have been spent on rudimentary tasks, allowing them to prioritize the agency’s highest value work,” said GSA, the lead agency for the Federal RPA Community of Practice which advocates for using RPA government-wide.
It cited as an example a bot to process work orders that come in from customers who need help with establishing contracts for general supplies and services, which “finds the lowest priced goods and services instantly, allowing employees to then purchase them in minutes instead of spending hours doing the same task manually.” That has saved some 5,000 labor hours so far this year and “customer agencies are getting their orders much faster and can submit even more requests,” it said.
GSA said it is expanding into areas such as optical character recognition and natural language processing software that “allow computers to extract unstructured data from images and documents, making it possible to automate more complicated tasks. One such task is identifying specific contract elements in over 8,000 federal leases so that GSA can update them to comply with a new accounting standard.”
It projected that will allow it to avoid some 32,000 hours of “tedious, manual tasks to employees” of going through more than 600,000 pages of lease documents to capture the information that needs to be updated before the new accounting standards begin next October.
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