Bot management 101: What one agency learned from its RPA pilot

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The Bureau of Fiscal Service discovered that managing robotic process automation is more like managing staff than it thought.

After launching a robotics process automation pilot, the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Fiscal Service realized the bots would need oversight and management, just as human workers do. 

The Office of Financial Innovation and Transformation's recent RPA pilot automated highly repetitive manual tasks and processes, such as copying and pasting information from different financial management systems. Officials there cited four key takeaways:

1. Start small to keep mistakes more manageable and improve the “educational journey” that comes with building and maintaining the RPA software.

2. Team effort is required to make an RPA project successful. Including people with different skill sets into the project will inject efficiency into the processes and deliver the greatest return on the RPA investment.

3. Keep the bots busy, ensuring they are fully occupied. An RPA can run 24/7 and work on more than one task, making it essential that managers take advantage of that capability to get the best value for the agency.

4. Separating duties, such as system tasks from operational processes, will ensure the integrity of automated processes and avoid the risk of fraud, waste or abuse.

Read the full blog post here.

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