In an effort to use technology to find innovative solutions to everyday efforts, Aptive is participating this month in a competitive challenge designed to improve the experience of Veterans seeking benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
In conjunction with teams from IBM, CGI and General Dynamics Information Technology, Aptive team members Bennett Gebken, Alex Mikuliak, Kortney Pierce and Imran Sadik are developing a bot to automate time-consuming manual processes for VA with an eye towards giving VA employees more time to serve Veterans.
“By developing a solution geared toward automation we reduce the overall processing time for the Veterans’ claims, and free up time for VA claims processors to focus on more pressing development actions, which will overall lead to quicker decisions on the claims,” explained Alex, a Senior Data Scientist who spent over 13 years working in various roles at VA, where he developed a deep expertise in VA claims processing and the Veterans Benefits Association’s (VBA) data structure.
“Robotic Processing Automation (RPA), and UiPath specifically as a platform, enable us to rethink our traditional approach to work. By leaving tasks that are repetitive, rules-based and non-dynamic to bots, we redirect valuable time and energies into more creative and meaningful human centered tasks,” said Imran, a certified UiPath Advanced RPA Developer who has experience working on other projects for VA that support large scale automation efforts.
This competition, the Robots With Benefits challenge, was developed by Ibility in partnership with UiPath, a leading RPA platform provider, and VA to address manual processes that benefit from automation. The organizers identified four distinct test cases and participants were given 20 days to develop a bot on the UiPath platform to automate the aforementioned processes. And while the technical aspects may have presented their own challenges, the opportunity to design something that may benefit Veterans was equally inspiring.
“I am extremely passionate about serving Veterans, and anytime I get the opportunity to help improve processes or make a positive impact on the VA experience for Veterans, I am all about it,” explained Kortney, an Intelligent Automation Engineer with almost seven years of experience working in various areas of VA while specializing in claims processing and robotic process automation.
“Having previous experience as both a VSR (Veteran Service Representative) as well as an RVSR (Rating Veteran Service Representative), I know the struggle of waiting for stressor verification and the impact it can have on a Veteran’s claim, so naturally I am eager to design an automated approach as a solution to the problem.”
As the team approaches the finish line, they will showcase their efforts on February 1 to the stakeholders, a panel of judges and the other teams. After the presentation, the judges will evaluate the bots based on four criteria: ease of use, effectiveness, scalability and technical build.
“The Aptive team has a unique understanding of the customer’s needs in that we have former VA employees, a Veteran and a certified UiPath Advanced RPA Developer on the team,” shared Bennett, Program Manager of Aptive’s Intelligent Automation practice.
“The unique blend of our team allows us to understand the problem from multiple perspectives and focus on delivering the most value possible for Veterans and taxpayers.” The winning team will be invited to present their work at UiPath Together conference, which will be held at the Ritz Carlton in Washington, D.C. on February 8.
Written By Justin Eger
Aptive wins 14 top honors from Hermes Creative Awards for its artistic work supporting the federal government and producing corporate materials. These awards recognize outstanding creative professionals and their traditional and digital works in the industry.
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