The Intelligent Automation Garage at the UK’s Largest Government Agency

On Monday and Tuesday more than 1200 people gathered for this year's #UiPathForward EMEA conference in London. While sharing the "Automation First" vision, UiPath Co-founder and CEO Daniel Dines welcomed on stage Shelley Campbell, Lead Product Owner of the Intelligent Automation Garage at the UK’s Department of Work and Pension (DWP). “Dream big, but start small,” Ms. Campbell advised for those who may be just starting their automation journey.

The DWP began by launching four pilot projects. Through scoring successes in automating these, they built belief, sponsorship, and momentum within their organization to transform their manner of work. Ms. Campbell explained:

We’ve got nine automations running today. We’ll have five more by the end of the year, 150 robots spun up, 600 by the end of the year.

DWP is the nation’s largest government department. It’s responsible for welfare, pensions and child maintenance policies. It administers the State Pension and a range of working age, disability and ill health benefits to around 20 million claimants and customers. Driven by an impulse to create a speedier and more efficient way of serving citizens, the DWP created an Intelligent Automation Garage in 2017 to help the department automate menial work, increase productivity and improve decision making. 

30.000 claims processed in 2 weeks

A 15:1 return on investment

Shelley and her team managed to free up a backlog of 30,000 claims in just two weeks, saving several thousand hours of work and achieving a 15:1 return on investment. The automation project was set up and implemented in 12 weeks. Using traditional methods, this would have taken around 35-40 weeks. DWP’s success in relieving operational strain has led to an expressed desire within the organization to discover more opportunities to automate but also transition from “Automation first” to higher forms of work augmentation through artificial intelligence.

Now we’re going into machine learning, so validating documents, reducing fraud, and then we’ll move into augmented decision making, which is obviously the nirvana that we’re looking for to combine all the great things that robots can do with the things they can’t do, which is to demonstrate empathy, to inquire, or be responsive. Automation is the place to start, but it’s not the place to finish. Shelley Campbell, Lead Product Owner of the Intelligent Automation Garage at DWP

The DWP is one of several public sector organizations that are already successful at enhancing their effectiveness through RPA. UiPath is currently serving more than 40 federal, state and local government customers globally.

Please delve into DWP’s story here:

department of work and pensions (DWP), UK 

The Intelligent Automation Garage

Delivering better services to citizens with RPA

Download PDF

You can also read more on this topic and learn straight from the source how other government agencies are doing more with less with RPA.