An innovative way of managing documents more efficiently in the office has been implemented by our member city Bydgoszcz, introducing RPA technology, i.e. the Automation of Business Processes.
Robotisation of invoice handling is already another automated process at Bydgoszcz City Hall. It allows more efficient management of the city's electricity consumption needs and, consequently, results in the city paying less for energy. In addition, it optimises work in the office and frees officials from performing boring, tedious and repetitive tasks, allowing them to engage in creative work for the city and its residents.
Monitoring consumption, invoices, collecting all the data and analysing it all has one goal, to keep electricity charges as low as possible for the city budget. This is the greatest benefit of the data collected by the robot and its collection in a central repository. We finally have access to data that we didn't have before and we can use it so that electricity charges for Bydgoszcz are as low as possible.
Robotisation frees employees from performing tedious, repetitive tasks, which, after all, in the age of widespread digitisation, officials do not need to deal with. The clerk should be doing conceptual work and not transcribing data from one system to another. Such activities can - successfully, without fatigue, exhaustion or mistakes - be performed by an automaton. And people, freed from having to do such activities, can get on with more creative work. It can be said, therefore, that robotisation fills labour shortages that cannot be filled by the labour market, but in no way leads to redundancies or job cuts. More cities have already expressed interest in RPA, including Warsaw and Wrocław.
Janusz Popielewski, Director of the IT Department of the Bydgoszcz City Hall, emphasises that this is a universal solution: ‘It is not based on any of our specific circumstances. Moreover, the contractor has undertaken to adapt it, for example, in the event of a change of energy supplier. Therefore, I believe that this or a similar solution can be implemented in any city or municipality. Local government units have similar problems related to energy purchasing and management.’
Tomasz Bońdos, Coordinator of the Energy Management Team at the Bydgoszcz City Hall confirms that ‘this is a solution that can also be applied in other local governments. In any case, it is very popular wherever we present it. This was the case, for example, in Sztum at the meeting of the Energie Cités Association. I think it is a solution that is worth promoting and propagating. We would be very happy to share our knowledge and experience about it with anyone interested.
More about the automation of the work of the Energy Management Team at the Bydgoszcz City Hall and the stages of implementation of this solution in the 3rd issue of the monthly magazine ‘IT in Administration’ (PL)
