RPA

Assessing the State of Federal Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Jan 26, 2022

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) was introduced to the federal government several years ago and is now recognized as a powerful processing and automation tool. RPA technologies emulate human actions and dramatically reduce an organization’s low-value workload, freeing up employee time for higher-value work.

To summarize and measure the progress of federal RPA programs over the last year, the RPA Community of Practice is proud to announce the publication of the 2021 State of Federal RPA Report. This report assesses the maturity and impact of RPA programs across the federal government, identifies federal RPA trends, and highlights best practices for future deployment.

The State of Federal RPA Report shows growth in automations and the capacity that empowers them to focus on agency mission delivery and improve citizen service. The RPA programs we reviewed in this report have created almost 1,000 automations while freeing up almost 1.5 million hours of capacity. The report captures information from 49 programs that responded to the survey. This growth demonstrates that programs have matured and increased their functional capacity. This report will be published annually to showcase agency progress in building and maturing RPA programs across the federal government.

Federal agencies are using RPA to speed up and connect financial systems, process HR requests faster, and perform thousands of acquisition functions with the click of a button. For the federal workforce, RPA means being able to focus on decision making and to do more for our federal employees and citizens.

To learn more about RPA and join the conversation, interested federal employees can visit the RPA CoP community page to subscribe to the listserv where they will be notified of future events and publications. Please direct any questions about the community or RPA to RPA_COP@gsa.gov. We look forward to hearing from you!