One of the most common features of government programs includes collecting and processing data, such as personal information related to applications for benefits, professional licenses, or permits. Often, programs fall behind because they cannot keep up with surges in workload, like when unemployment skyrocketed during the pandemic.
Such backlogs have long plagued departments, resulting in delays and hardships for constituents, not to mention political headaches for government leaders.
It’s easy to imagine stacks of paperwork piling up as program staff work day and night to evaluate and process forms. Fortunately, modern technology has caught up with this dilemma and offers hope that can greatly enhance the way that agencies serve people.
Intelligent Automation is a software technology that any business can use to automate repetitive steps using a “bot” to execute human tasks based on business rules. This enables developers to program bots by observing human tasks– such as navigating an application, looking up records, evaluating data fields, identifying matches and mismatches, reconciling discrepancies and duplicates– and then replicating those actions with incredible speed and accuracy. Bots can also be programmed to escalate more complex cases to staff queues for manual review.
While Intelligent Automation is not a substitute for human judgment, it can have a tremendous impact on backlogs by expediting the low-level, time-consuming tasks that create bottlenecks in processing. This allows personnel to spend more quality time ensuring that final outcomes are achieved, such as issuing benefits to families in need. Deployed and managed by skilled software developers, such as our expert team at 11:59, Intelligent Automation can increase the speed and accuracy of backlog processing while boosting opportunities for government staff to focus on more rewarding, mission-based work.