Process automation has reduced initial claims and post-entitlement actions. Image: Ekaterina_Minaeva/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffAn inspector general report has said there is potential for the SSA to make much wider use of robotics process automation, but that there are lessons to be learned from its limited use of bots to date.
It said that as part of IT modernization efforts, the SSA has used bots in processing center functions considered resource-intensive and prone to errors when data must be input manually—in turn a contributor to improper payments. Those improvements have reduced the percentage of both initial claims and post-entitlement actions that need to be processed manually, it said.
The SSA could increase the use of existing bots and develop new bots but first “must determine whether bots are cost beneficial and how it can best implement bots to ensure they result in net savings,” the report said. However, the agency lacks the data to identify the processes and workloads where the benefit would be the highest, it said, and “has yet to determine whether bot use results in net cost saving.”
It added that even in a program that SSA officials described as in it “infancy,” issues have arisen including that while its license for a bundle of bots allows for 10,000 users, it licensed only 3,800 of its employees to use them—and of those, only about half use them regularly. That “has remained relatively flat” despite agency efforts to encourage their use.
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