Automated Government
Federal agencies are ditching busy work to focus on missions.
Digital processes are increasingly taking over mundane tasks in business and in personal lives, improving efficiency and freeing people to dedicate their time to more substantive work. Federal agencies have noticed this trend and are eager to reap the benefits automation has to offer.
The Trump administration has taken notice, too, making automation a pillar of the President’s Management Agenda.
An analysis by the Office of Personnel Management suggests almost half of agencies’ workloads could be automated. For the workforce, that would mean 60 percent of federal employees could see their workloads reduced by as much as 30 percent. Additionally, some 5 percent of jobs could be automated entirely, according to OPM’s Federal Workforce Priorities Report.
But new technologies—and even the automation process itself—leads to different job opportunities. The key will be retraining federal employees who want to remain with the government.
As part of the management agenda, OMB and OPM are under a mandate to jump-start automation pilot programs by the end of the year, but there are pockets of automation already underway throughout the government. They are examples of efficiency and, in most cases, progress. But they all share one theme: change.
NEXT STORY: A New Kind of Labor Movement in Silicon Valley