GovExec TV: Five Questions with John Beglan

Across government agencies, legacy paper-based processes continue to slow down constituent services, and put added pressure on an already-strained workforce. “We see warehouses filled with paper and banker boxes that are essentially manually scanned and collected and maintained,” said John Beglan, director of sales at Tungsten Automation, formerly known as Kofax.

“Having to manage large seas of data and documentation in physical form takes manual labor,” he said. That’s problematic at a time when the government is under pressure to be more efficient.

Agencies can leverage AI-powered workflow automation, however, to ease the burden of many currently manual and labor-intensive processes, resulting in new efficiencies, elevated service levels and improved mission outcomes. 

Automating document workflows

A long-time provider of government software solutions, Tungsten brings to the table intelligent document processing (IDP), low-code process orchestration, compliant artificial intelligence (AI) and more. Its TotalAgility® solution, currently in the FedRAMP authorization process, uses AI to automate content-heavy workflows and deliver real-time business insights. 

Designed to support on-prem or cloud services, TotalAgility delivers intelligent document processing to a range of frameworks, including “records management, case management, claims processing and HR onboarding,” Beglan said.

Take for example Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, Beglan added. “Nearly every operation and agency has some form of FOIA, and that’s an ideal use case” for intelligent automation. Agencies are supposed to meet FOIA requests in 30 days, but backlogs occur frequently. Tungsten’s solution can reduce the processing time down to a matter of a day or less, mitigating backlog issues and improving the constituent experience with faster and more accurate results.

Along those same lines, knowledge discovery tools help to surface mission-critical insights faster. Sifting through data is often the equivalent of trying to find a needle in the haystack. AI-supported knowledge discovery provides the ability to look at vast amounts of data sets simultaneously and with a great amount of speed.

In support of mission outcomes, Beglan said, “this is all about a velocity of decision-making.”

Moving with confidence

Many in government express concerns about the possibility that an AI-driven solution will hallucinate. But Beglan stated that today’s state-of-the-art capabilities should ease those fears. “We’ve addressed those concerns by keeping a human-in-the-loop and ensuring fully transparent AI,” he said. These workflow safeguards give agencies the confidence they need to make decisions on the fly.

Such confidence is critical these days, as agencies struggle to become more efficient while at the same time experiencing workforce reductions. At this pivotal moment, leaders can’t afford to let paper-based processes get in the way. Automation can have a powerful impact. 

“In the records management realm, we’ve done some studies, and the efficiency gains can be as high as 80% across many different use cases,” Beglan said.

Once material has been digitized, whether it’s structured or semi-structured, or even handwritten — “we’re able to ingest the data, categorize it, and then move that information down the line so that decisions can be made from it and insights can be drawn.” In areas like claims processing, FOIA and grant management, AI-powered solutions can help increase productivity, decrease cost and support digital transformation as a whole.

Surge capacity

In intelligent workflow automation, AI helps agencies meet mission expectations even during periods of unexpectedly heavy activity. In claims processing, for example, there can be sudden surges of claims without much warning, which is often a key reason for backlogs.

In the face of unexpected surges in demand, an AI-driven solution can help government workers “do their job faster, better, and more effectively — at a reduced cost,” Beglan said. “At the end of the day, the efficiency gain is there.”

For agencies looking to tap into the power of intelligent automation solutions, he advises a measured effort at the beginning. With limited resources and perhaps some cultural reluctance, it makes sense for leaders to focus on a small-scope use case at first. Just pick one and put it in a sandbox environment, he said. That way, “it’s contained, it’s isolated.”

From there, success begets success. Early wins can help pave the way for more extensive deployments across a wider array of mission areas.

The time is right for all of this. Agencies today are striving to do more with less, meanwhile the current administration is highlighting the urgency of increasing and expanding AI adoption across the federal government. Given these twin pressures, the need to modernize and the efficiency imperative, Beglan said intelligent automation solutions “are in the right place at the right time, right now.”

Learn more about how Tungsten Automation can help your agency tap into the power of AI to streamline and modernize operations.