Neath Port Talbot Council is understood to have become the first local authority in Wales to use a robot to process back office administration. The council has been trialling the new technology, known as Robotics Process Automate (RPA), to process Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks and update employee information. At a personnel committee meeting head of resources Sheenagh Rees told councillors the robot had helped clear a backlog of data inputting within a matter of weeks. She said: "Since 2013 there has been a 50% reduction of administration staff in HR but we have only had increasing demand for our services. "The reason we were interested in using RPA was because it could help us deal with a high volume of work we weren't able to do.

SLOUGH, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Global business outsourcing provider Arvato has entered a strategic partnership with Blue Prism to offer Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to help councils deliver back-office transformation. The partnership will see Arvato use the cutting-edge automation software to provide local authorities with an end-to-end solution of identifying, designing, building and monitoring automated processes, providing RPA-as-a-service and consultancy and training. Arvato will use the innovative technology to help current and future clients in local government automate transactional back office functions, such as revenues and benefits, HR, payroll and finance, increasing process speed and efficiency while freeing up employees to deliver front-line services. RPA uses software to create an agile, virtual workforce which mimics human processing of repetitive labour-intensive tasks. It follows rule-based business processes and interacts with systems in the same way that people do.