AGA Report on the Status of RPA in Federal Financial Management

AGA Report on the Status of RPA in Federal Financial Management

By Kristian Jackson, Senior Consultant

The past year has brought about many changes in how business is conducted, and the Federal Government environment is no different than other industries in this respect.  The Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic has necessitated the transfer of office-only positions to remote-enabled ones, which means many manual processes should be examined for ways to decrease the time and effort needed to accomplish those tasks.  The Financial Management (FM) environment across the Federal Government is large and complicated, as are the systems that support those processes, and this is where Robotic Process Automation (RPA) comes into play.

RPA is the utilization of software packages to automate business processes.  Automating processes is not a new concept, but historically would have required either custom software from vendors, such as Oracle or SAP®, or custom-developed solutions that leveraged software developers and technologies, such as application programming interfaces, to interact with the affected systems.  The main barrier to entry for this kind of automation is usually cost, but also the amount of time required for the development.  RPA seeks to address these concerns by leveraging a different approach.  RPA solutions leverage forms of computer vision to interact the same way a human would.  This eases the development since the direct translation of manual business processes can be accomplished.

The Association of Government Accountants (AGA) conducted a study on the use of RPA across Federal FM organizations and has put forth its results in a report, titled RPA in Federal Financial Management Organizations – A Study of Progress.  The report serves as a point-in-time measurement of the status of RPA implementations across 14 FM organizations within nine different departments (see Figure 2).  In the report, AGA covers what has been successful, what has not worked, and where the agencies rate themselves on a five-point scale, from just beginning to implement RPA to high-performing agencies based on the described criteria.  Most of the respondents rank themselves as category 1 or 2, meaning they have less than 20 bots in production and less than 50,000 hours of capacity created (an hour of capacity is what a human could accomplish in that time).

FM organizations that have had successful implementations all have these characteristics in common: simple, stable processes; well-structured data; and excellent communication within the affected team, developers, and related parties, such as the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO).  By selecting simple processes, the number of variables, such as people and systems involved, becomes easier to address.  Defining the process as stable means that the steps needed to complete the process are consistent without the need for objective decisions and that the data used in the process is well-structured.  Finally, verifying that all affected parties have open lines of communication ensures that all aspects of design, development, testing, and deployment can be addressed with any issues resolved promptly.

Common pain points that were identified in the study based on input from the FM organizations are security, change management, and governance.  On the surface, since RPA uses the same interfaces as human counterparts, security should be easily addressed, but considering change management makes solutions more nuanced.  Although these are FM solutions, including the OCIO at the start of the process is critical.  The solution must receive authorization to operate (ATO) and support once it enters the Operations and Maintenance Phases.  Program and interface changes will also need to be tested and possibly re-coded or they could negatively impact bot performance.

What is the path forward?  If you have already begun to implement RPA, can you expand the use cases?  If you have not, define simple use cases to get started, reach out to your OCIO and determine if others in the organization have already started implementing RPA, and clearly define the metrics that you need for success.

About Kearney & Company

Established in 1985, Kearney & Company is the largest Certified Public Accounting (CPA) firm in the country focused exclusively on the Federal Government. Kearney provides financial management services to the Federal Government to improve the overall effectiveness and efficiency of financial operations; increase accountability and compliance with laws, regulations, and guidance; and protect funds from fraud, waste, & abuse. Consistently recognized as a Best Place to Work by multiple publications over the past decade, Kearney fosters a “people first” culture. We have more than 700 professionals providing services to every Cabinet-level Department and major independent agencies.