Federal IT employees said that they need automated capabilities in order to streamline administrative tasks that take up a chunk of the workday.
Seventy-seven percent of respondents to ServiceNow’s survey of Federal technology workers said that they spend more than a quarter of their workday on manual, administrative tasks.
One third of respondents said that they still hand-deliver paper files to others.
Bob Osborn, ServiceNow’s chief technology officer for the public sector, said that when he left the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, he had to manually bring his exit papers around to different departments to get them to sign off on the different categories, so he knows from experience how inefficient it is to deal with paper files in the Federal government.
Sean Convery, vice president and general manager of the Security Business Unit at ServiceNow, said that automation capabilities free up time for IT professionals to focus on the work that they’re most interested in.
“Let the system give you the room to let the people focus on what really matters,” Convery said.
Fewer than 1 in 5 of the survey respondents said that they are currently using advanced automation; 77 percent of respondents said that they will need greater automation in their workplace within the next five years to keep up with the increasing pace of work at their agency.
However, agencies need to modernize legacy systems before they can leverage new automation tools, according to Osborn. Respondents said legacy tools are the top barrier to adopting artificial intelligence.
Thirty-nine percent of survey respondents said that the uncertainty around IT funding is preventing them from acquiring new technology. Osborn said that once the Modernizing Government Technology Act is signed, and agencies can pull from the IT working capital fund, the uncertainty will be lifted.
“MGT is going to propel the Federal government into modernizing the IT environment,” Osborn said.
