By Debbie Gregory.

The federal government is using emerging and innovative new technologies to improve government services. The goal is to make inefficiency, bureaucratic red tape and non-user-friendly services a thing of the past and to save money.

Digital processes are increasingly improving efficiency with pockets of automation already underway throughout the government. They are examples of efficiency and, in most cases, progress.

One example is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has already seen promising results from its experiments with robotics process automation (RPA) in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, which evaluates applications for new drugs, generic drugs, and biologics. By developing a bot to automate the evaluation process, the agency was able to reduce the average processing time by 60 percent, saving 8,000 hours of manual work. This can also save lives.

Additionally, automation can make it much easier for the public to interact with government services and access more relevant information quicker. This would be extremely beneficial for the VA, which has been known for being backlogged regarding services, claims and benefits for years.

The federal government is serious about overcoming its inefficiency challenges and has already made encouraging steps to use automation in order to make government better.

“I think a lot of folks know the government is kind of almost staggering under the weight of all the paper we have,” said Margaret Weichert, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget.

Of course, with automation comes the elimination of jobs. But the key will be retraining.

“We have any number of new-type jobs that are being created around data, cyber, and even things like law enforcement that we struggle to fill,” Weichert said. “And if we’ve got a dedicated workforce who have passed our background checks, who want to be of service to their country, we need to figure out how do we have the agility to reskill employees, redeploy them, move folks around so that they have skills that are aligned to the 21st-century mission.”