The Future of Work: How emerging technology and innovation is shaping work, the workforce, and the workplace for Federal organizations
August 09, 2018
Federal organizations are changing the way they work. Through the adoption of digital workforce capabilities, process robotics, cognitive technologies, crowdsourcing solutions, and other emerging technologies, the nature of how government work is executed is changing.
By including more innovation into their workstreams, government organizations will become more impactful and productive, increase decision-making capabilities, and better support the overall well-being of their employees. This will have a profound impact on how Federal Organizations execute their mission and how Shared Services Organizations meet customer needs.
Across the Federal government, disruptive innovations are making way for new workstreams to emerge and for existing ones to evolve. These disruptors have the potential to change the way work will be done in the future. Many of these include:
- Ubiquity of technology
- Immense amounts of data
- AI, cognitive computing, and robotics
- Potential automation of jobs
- Diversity/generational change
- Longer careers
- Increased adoption of contingent work
These disruptors are already reshaping the way government and industry perform work, the workforce doing the work and the workplace where work takes place. The Federal landscape is beginning to address these changes and will need to stay abreast of emerging technologies, understand their impact, and adapt their delivery and operating models. These innovations will continue to influence the way in which shared services organizations operate and serve the government, both internally and externally.
William Eggers’ keynote presentation showed how many labor-intensive, repetitive tasks are highly amenable to automation. Automating certain tasks could save billions of dollars and free up millions of hours across the federal workforce. This does not simply mean removing these jobs from the labor force, but reimagining the workforce, by (1) matching workers to work; (2) creating networks of teams; and (3) crowdsourcing tasks. Sample scenarios were given around each of these areas during the presentation. Eggers also highlighted research that quantified the immense return on investment, from both a time and financial savings perspective that the Federal Government could achieve by leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) to transform the nature of work.
This is the sixth in a series of seminars exploring major challenges in the areas of human capital leadership, governance innovation, fiscal accountability, acquisition and emerging technologies as they relate to shared services. The objective of the series is to enhance the government’s understanding and execution of shared services as mission-enhancing value drivers in Agency Reform Plans.
