State of Federal RPA Report: Adoption and Impact of Robotic Process Automation in the Federal Government

The State of Federal RPA report describes the growth and maturity of Federal RPA Programs to convey agency progress in digital transformation and automation.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) was introduced to the federal government several years ago and is now recognized as a powerful processing and automation tool. RPA technologies emulate human actions and dramatically reduce an organization’s low value workload, freeing up employee time for higher-value work.

To summarize and measure the progress of Federal RPA programs over the last two years, the RPA Community of Practice is proud to announce the publication of the State of Federal RPA Report. This report:

• Provides a standardized framework for measuring RPA Program maturity
• Establishes a baseline to measure RPA Program growth on an annual basis
• Creates a methodology for gauging the Government-Wide impact of RPA on Federal strategies such as the President’s Management Agenda, Cross-Agency Priority Goal 6
• Identifies incremental and obtainable steps to mature Federal RPA Programs
• Acknowledges barriers to RPA adoption

The report shows how RPA program maturity increased significantly during fiscal year 2020. Notably, the number of automations deployed across the federal government increased by 110 percent and the number of annualized hours of capacity created increased by 195 percent. This growth demonstrates that programs have matured and increased their functional capacity. This report will be published annually to showcase agency progress in building and maturing RPA programs across the federal government.

To learn more about RPA and join the conversation, interested federal employees can visit the RPA CoP community page to subscribe to the listserv where they will be notified of future events and publications. Please direct any questions about the community or RPA to RPA_COP@gsa.gov. Look forward to hearing from you!