RPA technology provider UiPath has joined an academic initiative at George Mason University to examine how RPA has made government more effective. George Mason’s Center for Business Civic Engagement (CBCE) launched the program this week to promote public understanding and education about the technology, engage in research of applications and results, and provide an academic stage for discussion of public policy issues relating to RPA.
According to its website, the CBCE’s mission “is to study the impact of the application of business theory and principles to government to determine if government can be both more effective and efficient for its stakeholders.” As one of the largest organizations in the world, applications that can increase efficiency, even a little, can have outsized effects on the U.S. federal government.
According to Dr. David Rehr, the center’s director, the CBCE was launched three years ago with a focus on transparency and accountability in government, especially in its use of technologies that can make it more efficient and, therefore, a better steward of taxpayers’ money.
The RPA Initiative, Rehr tells RPA Today, grew out of study into technologies that were helpful in different ways during the pandemic.
“At the beginning of the pandemic it became apparent that RPA was one of the technologies that was making a difference dealing with the problems arising at this very difficult time,” he says. “This was a technology that might be helpful reaching the CBCE’s long-term objective of making government more effective for everybody. We have to do something that helps them tell this story.”