The Best of What’s New in Automation

Posted on by The Carahsoft Team

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the conversation surrounding automation in government featured a lot of skepticism. For some, automation seemed too difficult or risky to implement. For others, it represented a threat to human workers. And for many, change in general is hard to embrace because it means leaving behind the familiar and venturing toward the unknown. But when COVID-19 infection rates skyrocketed, and when programs like unemployment insurance (UI) faced unprecedented spikes in demand, governments felt compelled to consider and adopt technologies they may have once resisted. And so, in 2022, the dialogue on automation has a much different tone. The focus has shifted toward identifying opportunities, challenges and best practices so that agencies can figure out where automation fits best. Learn how your agency or municipality can take full advantage of the growing momentum behind automation in Carahsoft’s Innovation in Government® report.

Modernizing Expense and Payment Management

“When you have an automated system, if someone is about to do something that is noncompliant, the system flags them. Depending on how an organization sets policy, the system can stop the employee completely or allow the spend to proceed but with a warning that the behavior is out of compliance and will be flagged. That impacts how people make their buying decisions. As part of auditing overall, AI, ML and other technologies also work together to detect abnormal or potentially fraudulent behavior. Continual noncompliant behavior is tracked, marked and reported on. In terms of decision-making, intelligent automated solutions give organizations actionable data—sometimes for the first time ever. Organizations can see where they are in their cash flow, their debts, and so on and use that data to make decisions that drive the business outcomes they need.”

Read more insights from SAP Concur’s senior director for state and local government, Jim McClurkin.

Having an Automation-First Mindset

“Some executives don’t realize how much repetitive work their teams do until we talk to their staff and then show them the power of the possible. The best ideas for automation come from the people doing the work, so simple education is the best way to prepare employees. We partner with organizations to help educate their end users and show them what’s possible. It’s also helpful to use terms like “digital employee” or “digital workforce” rather than the term “bot,” which isn’t always well received. People understand they can have a digital assistant right on their desktop. Adoption is important because state and local governments need digital workers to address their current and future workforce needs, just like the private sector.”

Read more insights from UiPath’s vice president of sales for state, local and education (SLED), Phil Calzadilla.

Getting Intelligent Automation Right

“We’ve seen the most success where there’s initially enough investment to have an impact and get the organization behind it. Projects that are too small often pass below the visibility of executive leadership and tend to die on the vine. At the same time, projects can’t be more than the organization can chew at one time. The Covered California project started in a discrete area around document processing. Over time, they decided to apply analytics to it, and then improve workflows. Eventually, they added robotics to move the data to various systems. It became this very large but modular step-by-step layering in of different levels of automation. All of this resulted in an incredibly robust automation system that handles 50 million records a year and 300,000 processes per month, but it was done judiciously.”

Read more insights from Kofax’s vice president of public sector and federal sales, Jeremy Hogg.

Preparing For a New Wave of Automation

“Based on trends in the federal government, I expect both state and local governments to continue adopting the cloud over the next five to 10 years. As organizations consider new deployments in the cloud, it would be great to start with automation from the beginning. Instead of making it an after-the-fact approach, bake it into the solution from the start. Also, don’t be afraid to try new tools, and don’t be afraid to accept that you might need to get some training for your team. These are new skills, and enablement is valuable from the beginning.”

Read more insights from Cloudera’s principal solutions engineer, Ian Brooks.

Download the full Innovation in Government® report for more insights from these cybersecurity thought leaders and additional industry research from GovTech.

Adapting with Evolving Higher Education Challenges

Posted on by Tim Boltz

For many colleges and universities, the global pandemic served as a wake-up call for more innovative teaching models. They quickly discovered that remote learning is no longer an occasional tool for specific situations. Instead, a mix of in-person and online platforms has become an imperative to ensure digital equity and educational excellence. Even before the pandemic, researchers cited the importance of course design and the need for a pedagogical shift to ensure success in blended learning. Now, many believe that as faculty and students become more proficient with the technology and adapt to online education, outcomes will improve. Close collaboration between faculty and technology teams is also important as both groups adapt to new teaching models. To ensure clear communication, many institutions will need to invest in cameras, microphones and speaker systems, and many classes may benefit from a technology assistant who keeps track of the messages students post and resolves any technical issues. Incorporating such modern tools alongside institutions’ legacy solutions presents a diverse set of challenges. In the Campus Technology survey, staying within budget constraints (44%) was the top challenge cited by respondents, and it goes hand in hand with choosing the right products, services and solutions (41%). Technological challenges also include getting legacy and modern solutions to work together (36%), sharing data between legacy and modern systems (27%), and managing and securing a diverse IT ecosystem (25%). Learn how, by investing in further modernization, your institution can boost its ability to meet current demands while maintaining flexibility to respond to the unknown challenges ahead in Carahsoft’s Innovation in Education report.

Embracing the New Normal in Higher Education

“By allowing students of different backgrounds, perspectives, and ages to interact with one another, a hybrid or HyFlex approach enriches the classroom experience. That flexibility should be used as a recruitment tool: By offering a range of options for in-person and online learning, institutions can dramatically expand their reach nationally and even internationally. The success of the new normal in education hinges on being able to measure student engagement. In a face-to-face classroom, instructors can note whether students are making eye contact and how many of them are raising their hands or asking questions. At Class Technologies, we enable instructors to bring that same emphasis on student outcomes into an online format.”

Read more insights from Class Technology’s Senior Director of Advocacy and Community, Dr. Kim Oppelt.

Using Data Analytics to Enhance Student Services

“In addition to automation, artificial intelligence can transform the way colleges and universities provide services to their students. When higher education leaders understand the value and availability of AI, they can create a vision for its adoption. Then data analysts can use AI to accelerate the institution’s delivery of student services and improve its ability to predict outcomes early, enabling educators to address trouble spots early or invest in key initiatives. With AI, analysts can focus at the level of the entire student population, a certain demographic profile or the individual student. For example, AI can integrate with a campus learning system to identify students who may be at risk of dropping out. To be successful, AI must be part of an institution’s overall data management strategy, and the IT infrastructure should be built or updated to support that strategy.”

Read more insights from Cloudera’s Senior Solutions Engineer, Brian Hagan.

A Cybersecurity Mesh Speeds Digital Transformation

“Research firm Gartner defines a cybersecurity mesh as a “flexible, composable architecture that integrates widely distributed and disparate security services” — in other words, it enables institutions to leverage a suite of complementary tools. A mesh architecture creates efficiency and greater coverage across the digital surface, while enabling the IT team to understand what’s happening on its network and better prepare for the next cybersecurity event. This concept can also reduce the number of point security solutions and products. To make the business case for taking that approach, focus on demonstrating return on investment. A mesh architecture reduces costs because it consolidates tools and services while simplifying digital transitions. The mesh components will enable standardized training and raise the bar on knowledge transfer across the distributed IT environment.”

Read more insights from Fortinet’s Field CISO for Education, Bob Turner.

Why Student Experience Equals Student Success

“Student needs are so individualized that a single, one-size-fits-all approach to services is ineffective. Institutions need systems that can constantly learn from students as they’re navigating their experience on campus and then take student-specific action. Qualtrics’ experience management platform enables students to share feedback in a host of different ways and then crucially, pairs that data with internal systems to help institutions gain a holistic view of those students. Campus leaders can listen, understand and act through a platform that gathers information and converts it into real-time insights for decision-makers. In addition, the Qualtrics platform uses artificial intelligence to help schools understand what friction points exist in the student journey and then helps to automate actions, such as connecting students with the right resources, at scale. By giving the right people the right information at the right time, AI enables institutions to intervene at the moments that matter most. It also helps decision-makers measure the impact of those actions.”

Read more insights from Qualtrics’ Vice President Higher Education Strategy, Joshua Sine.

Pivoting to Continuous Modernization in Higher Education

“Continuous modernization involves making small changes and regularly deploying those changes under a methodology called continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD). Users try out new features, and developers get immediate validation and testing throughout the entire process, which results in targeted and ongoing improvements. Another key element is automation. When rote tasks such as spinning up virtual machines, configuring networks or resolving users’ help tickets are automated, IT administrators can focus on more complex activities, such as improving processes or incorporating new technologies. In addition, containerization makes it easy to migrate applications and workloads back and forth from on-premises systems to the cloud as needed.”

Read more insights from Red Hat’s Chief Architect for Education and the North America Public Sector, Damien Eversmann.

Using the Power of Data to Support Collaboration

“Data analysis can help institutions gain a fuller understanding of their cybersecurity posture. For example, it can enable risk-based alerting, so staffers are not overwhelmed with security alerts that aren’t important. In addition, many institutions are merging their development, security and operations cycles in a methodology called DevSecOps. That collaborative approach ensures that security is an integral element of IT systems rather than an afterthought. Collaboration also results in deeper insights. When institutions can access and analyze student experience and outcomes, they have a much clearer picture of what they need to do from a strategy and planning perspective to enhance academic programs and student services.”

Read more insights from Splunk’s Strategic Advisor, Frank Myers, and Business Development Manager, Elizabeth Thompson.

A Data-Informed Approach to Recruiting and Retaining Faculty

“UT Austin has a strong commitment to nominating faculty for major awards across racial and gender lines. However, we wanted to pinpoint any gaps in the nomination process to make sure we retain talented faculty members by recognizing a diversity of research. We chose to partner with Tableau because the company offers a user-friendly process for developing self-service dashboards. In this case, an awards analysis dashboard helps us quickly identify under-awarded faculty in each department and drill down into race/ethnicity and gender information. As a result, we have achieved better equity in the awards nomination process and improved our faculty recruitment and retention efforts.”

Read more insights from the University of Texas at Austin’s Chief Data Officer and Executive Director of Institutional Reporting, Research and Information Systems, Shiva Jaganathan.

Creating a Single Source of Data Truth

“The ability to make those kinds of informed decisions hinges on robust data sharing. Unfortunately, many institutions still lack consistency in data access and management. And when data exists in silos, there is no single source of truth. Breaking down silos to give end users the power to do their own research is crucial, and that culture change starts at the top. Leaders must drive the demand for universal access to data so that everyone can be confident in the data they’re using and the decisions they’re making. At Tableau, our mission is to help people see and understand data. We continually enhance our product to ensure that decision-makers at all levels have access to the data and insights they need.”

Read more insights from Tableau’s Regional Vice President of Education and Nonprofit Sales, Cassidy Macias, and Vice President of U.S. Education Enterprise Sales, Adam Ingram-Eiser.

Discovering the Endless Possibilities of Automation

“From recruitment through graduation and beyond, automation can play a crucial role in ensuring that students have the experience the college or university wants them to have. Automation can help students succeed, and after they graduate, automation can be used to stay in touch — for example, by congratulating them on a new job when their LinkedIn profile changes and encouraging them to give back to the university. In the past couple of years, a mental health crisis has arisen in higher education, and many students withdrew from institutions or struggled to keep up with their studies. Tackling the issue should be a top priority in higher education because the crisis will continue for at least a few more years as people become accustomed to going back to campuses and in-person learning. Automated services can help institutions check in with students to see how they’re doing and connect them with mental health resources if necessary.”

Read more insights from UiPath’s Global State, Local and Regional Government Industry Lead, Dan Horan.

A More Immersive Experience for Students and Staff

“Zoom was a market leader in higher education even before the pandemic because our tools are affordable and easy to use. We have built a unified communications platform on top of our popular videoconferencing technology and, for the past two years, have focused on creating a superior on-campus experience by integrating communication across all operating systems and expanding capabilities via cloud telephony with Zoom Phone. For example, among many amazing features, using the Zoom application on a smartphone gives users the ability to have Zoom Phone voicemail messages transcribed and sent to their e-mail. In addition, while most people are familiar with the chat function that’s enabled during a Zoom meeting, we have a separate, robust Zoom Chat collaboration tool built into our unified communications stack. It allows users to create communication channels for particular projects or teams and conduct one-on-one or group chats.”

Read more insights from Zoom’s Global Education Marketing Lead, Johann Zimmern.

Download the full Innovation in Education report for more insights from these IT modernization thought leaders and for additional industry research from Campus Technology.

How Agencies Can Go Deeper with Robotic Process Automation

Posted on by Chris Townsend

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) brings value in terms of data collection, aggregation and analysis, document processing, claims processing, and delivering better customer service through call center automation—exactly the kinds of functions government agencies need to perform. RPA has delivered a tremendous value to public sector organizations in back office automation, but recently state and local governments are showing interest in using RPA to address challenges intrinsic to their mission and solving larger problems in public sector.

Diving Deeper into RPA’s Capabilities

Federal, state, and local government agencies have rapidly increased their adoption of RPA, particularly recently since the pandemic is requiring employees to work from home and has created significant backlogs. State governments, in particular, have used RPA in areas such as unemployment claims, SNAP program claims, HHS, Department of Motor Vehicles processes, and many other sectors.

RPA adoption follows a predictable pattern. Agencies initially automate back office functions, such as HR, finance, IT services, supply chain, etc. Once staff understand the technology’s time to value and see how easy it is to implement, they often expand its use to include operations, direct customer service and support, claims, and document processing—and eventually expand it into mission automation.

Ultimately staff creates a demand across the agency where multiple functional areas all are starting to roll out their own RPA environments—perhaps under the supervision of the IT department or a Center of Excellence. At that point, agencies begin to view RPA not as a set of technology tools, but as a true enterprise capability that can drive enterprise scale. Such agencies want to have an operating model, governance, and plan to prioritize how to get the greatest value from their automation in the shortest period of time.

Government agencies tend to be very judicious and intentional in their vetting and adoption of new technology, but the RPA technology has been quickly adopted at enterprise scale. Procurement processes that usually take 24 to 36 months are sometimes less than a year. Very large federal and state agencies have deployed RPA much more quickly than other technologies—testifying to RPA’s ease of use and simplicity as well as its incredible value.

AI in the Workplace of the Future

Government staff have been trying to figure out how to deploy AI in a meaningful way, allowing employees to work more efficiently and better serve constituents. RPA is the gateway for easy and meaningful AI use. Agencies can build AI and machine learning into an RPA workflow for an image or document, process steps in a claim, implementation of a chat bot, assistance in a call center, etc. For example, RPA working with AI can read a claim document (even handwritten ones), make sure it’s valid, check it in multiples systems, and ensure it is sent to the right person.

Effective AI requires data collection and aggregation, making decisions with large amounts of data. But the data must be normalized, cleaned, standardized, and error-free—processes RPA can perform. RPA can reach into those datasets, clean the data, aggregate it from various locations, feed it into an AI model, and then take action based on the information that is produced.

Addressing Fraud, Waste and Abuse

AI in conjunction with RPA can save government organizations billions of dollars. Much of today’s waste, fraud, and abuse auditing is done after money has already been sent—since governments are required to pay out claims within a certain amount of time. Agencies do not have enough people to analyze all the payments to ensure accuracy, so the claims are audited post-payment to determine if they are valid. With automation and AI, agencies can examine many more of the claims than would be possible manually. This allows a thorough and proactive process that eliminates fraud before the claims are paid.

RPA for Help Desks

Many agencies are migrating on-premises help desks to cloud-based systems. This is often a manual effort and very time-consuming because agencies must run systems in parallel for longer than they expect, requiring them to pay for maintenance and infrastructure for multiple systems.

However, agencies can realize a greater ROI on their cloud investment by automating much of that transition process. RPA can automate the actual integration between the two systems during the migration while also doing handoffs from the on-prem system to the cloud system; this facilitates internal customer service tickets on the legacy system as they’re migrated to the new system.

A Robot for Every Person

RPA is so intuitive that employees who are closest to the work and who actually process the workflows have the ability to build their own automations: a robot for every person. Once agency staff understand RPA’s ease of use and the time of value, they start to devise new ideas to drive efficiencies. It empowers the workforce and dramatically improves morale.

This technology could be deployed on every desktop within the government, essentially giving every employee a digital assistant that can automate repetitive, mundane tasks. If you can save each employee a few minutes a day and scale that across the entire agency, the savings are hundreds of millions of dollars. “A robot for every person” is a powerful idea that more and more public sector organizations are exploring.

Download our resource to find out why agencies are overwhelmingly using RPA vendor UiPath’s seamless integration as they incorporate digital technologies such as chatbots, ML, and AI.

| Carahsoft

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