One Bot Saves NSF Staff Roughly 25,000 Hours Per Year, CIO Says

One Bot Saves NSF Staff Roughly 25,000 Hours Per Year, CIO Says

The last few years mark the early end of the National Science Foundation’s journey adopting robotic process automation, the buzzy emerging technology practice that involves deploying bots or digital assistants to essentially mimic humans performing repetitive, menial tasks.


“We have automations going on in the [information technology] shop to facilitate automated build and deploy of solutions. We have the HR shop, the financial shop—they're all administrative functions,” NSF Chief Information Officer Dorothy Aronson said Wednesday. “But the one I'm most excited about is actually a brainchild of someone who was in the program office, who is not a technician, and just had this idea for how to save time.”


During a virtual interview, Aronson briefed Nextgov on that implementation and her broader RPA vision. She and another NSF insider also shared a little advice for feds looking to launch their own automations.


Taking Away the Mundane


RPA encompasses automating business processes that typically require more manual work. 


Elaborating on the existing use case that’s really stuck with her, Aronson explained that the NSF plans thousands of meetings each year, through which it hosts heaps of invitees. A large percentage of people generally don’t respond to the initial invitations that the agency’s business system disseminates, but certain rules around public meetings require a reply.


According to Aronson, Clarissa Johnson, who now serves as an NSF IT specialist, was sparked by an idea for how to save time in parts of that meeting-planning federal administrative function.


“She came up with a logic for automating the nag notes—or the notes that continuously go out to people—and it's been a tremendous time-saver,” Aronson explained. “We’re estimatin ..

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