The Virginia Academic Robotic Process Automation Community of Practice (CoP), an initiative launched in November by George Mason University, has released its first paper focused on how colleges and universities can benefit from intelligent automation.
Robotic Process Automation in Higher Education: A Primer to Begin is designed for institutions that are unfamiliar with RPA, the ways it can be applied throughout a university’s operations and steps that are necessary to begin implementing an automation strategy.
“As universities are discovering the power of RPA and intelligent automation, we want to help educate the academic sector with what needs to be considered when embarking the journey,” said Dr. David K. Rehr, director at George Mason’s Center for Business Civic Engagement, co-founder of the Center’s RPA Initiative and co-author of the CoP’s paper. “We want to reduce any uncertainty and risk as the automation moves forward.”
The paper was co-authored by Jessa Barnes, advisor of the CoP and practice lead of Intelligent Automation for UDig, a technology consulting company that joined GMU’s RPA Initiative last summer.
The CoP is focused initially on other institutions in GMU’s home state of Virginia and aims to help them become familiar with the opportunities that exist for colleges and universities to implement RPA, and how those implementations ultimately will benefit the schools’ students.