Functioning in government means working in the context of workflows, complicated by different agency rules and regulations. It seems though, according to a recent Accenture survey, that government agencies are doing little to leverage automation tools to reduce the manual processes in their day-to-day work. This is important for more than just the efficiency of an individual office as more than 80% of these federal agencies are serving an external office.
Accenture queried 200 federal government executives who have responsibilities tied to business processes and service delivery to gain insight into how process automation is being implemented in government.
The survey indicated that 58% had business processes requiring complete or significant manual processing. While 23% have automated their business process, they haven’t yet taken steps to make performance improvements using analytics. This isn’t to say that there isn’t some value being created in business data; 62% reported that operational data offers moderate value. This means that the data is good, but not necessarily in a format well-suited for analysis.
Part of the reason behind this could be that agencies aren’t yet set up to make a large process automation change. More than half of the respondents said that decision-making criteria was only partially integrated and almost a quarter face gaps from a dependence on legacy systems and ad-hoc decisioning.
Despite some relatively bad news in terms of how federal agencies are performing with automation, it’s not for a lack of trying. Most agencies are working toward a more digital future, with only 6% not currently engaged in some effort.
(Source: Accenture)
The Accenture report concludes with a few recommendations for agencies moving forward. They warn that the incremental changes that are being made aren’t enough to keep up with the pace of technology and the expectations of the agencies’ end users. The key to bridging this divide lies in using digital process automation to provide a transformative result.
Extract aims to be a piece of the puzzle in the move to increased automation. In fact, 62% of respondents in the Accenture survey indicated that digital process automation platforms are very or extremely important as a technology for achieving modernization. We offer a solution that can automatically index or redact your unstructured documents, freeing your staff to concentrate on more important value-added projects. If you’d like to learn more about how our solution can transform your organization, please reach out today.
About the Author: Chris Mack
Chris is a Marketing Manager at Extract with experience in product development, data analysis, and both traditional and digital marketing. Chris received his bachelor’s degree in English from Bucknell University and has an MBA from the University of Notre Dame. A passionate marketer, Chris strives to make complex ideas more accessible to those around him in a compelling way.