Federal agencies are not as digitally equipped as they should be: report

A local IT services firm found that many federal agencies are falling behind on the digital process automation front.

Arlington, Va.-based Accenture Federal Services (AFS) recently surveyed 200 executives across both defense and civilian agencies to examine factors that are driving success, including workforce training and real-time analytics and performance monitoring, and also provided a framework for measuring digital maturity. Principal directors of the AFS CIO Advisory Practice and former government officials Dr. Dave McClure and Malcolm Jackson authored the Accenture Federal Digital Process Maturity Survey.

What key barriers to modernizing business processes and service delivery are in government? Find out now. https://t.co/M6bva2spId pic.twitter.com/ms62HKB2dU

— Accenture Federal (@AccentureFed) May 4, 2019

What is digital process automation? AFS defines digital process automation as federal agencies extending the strengths of their core business processes to all of their operations, such as HR management, onboarding and expense reporting.

AFS’s framework for measuring digital maturity is split into these five categories (with descriptions from the report):

• Manual: Paper exchange or email integration with ad hoc execution.
• Integrated: Standardized and integrated but still requiring significant manual processing.
• Automated: Integrated and automated, with limited manual intervention for exception handling, as needed.
• Optimized: Integrated and automated with active use of performance monitoring and analytics for continuous process improvement.
• Digitized: Integrated, automated and optimized, with the added ability to dynamically reconfigure workflow and business rules to address ad hoc requirements.

Overall, 12% said their businesses are completely manual compared to the 6% who consider their businesses fully optimized.

Here are some other key stats from the report:

• 58% of federal executives reported that most of their business processes are immature.
• Only 22% said that their business rules and logic are well-documented and fully implemented within business process systems.
• Just 30% described the operational data supporting their business processes and service delivery as high value, meaning that it is highly accessible, integrated and well-structured.
• A majority of federal agencies are pursuing or have undertaken efforts to modernize and digitize their business processes, while only 6% reported that they are not pursuing any efforts at this time.
• 38% of execs reported that the biggest barrier to digitizing processes and service delivery is lack of funding.

AFS is an active advocate for companies updating their digital processes.

We are proud to support the U.S. Department of Energy's #digitaltranformation from an on-premises IT service model to the #cloud. https://t.co/E5nxFQgIv6

— Accenture Federal (@AccentureFed) May 2, 2019

Aside from this report, the company also recently expanded in Texas with a cybersecurity center, offering cybersecurity-as-a-service to the Department of Defense and other government agencies, Technical.ly DC previously reported.