Page 5 - MIL Connection Winter 2018

Contract wins

workforce development in the Southern Maryland area, including MIL on winning Treasury Team!
ongoing education and professional development efforts. TPP’s
own participation in the 2017 conference was coordinated by MIL and The Reston Consulting Group, Inc. (RCG, Inc.) were
Maryland’s Department of Commerce. the successful bidders in our recompete for the Department
Referring to MIL’s participation at this year’s conference, MIL of Treasury’s IT Infrastructure Operations Support Services
Senior VP Larry Hollingsworth stated, “We’re always excited 2.0 (IOSS 2.0) Blanket Purchase Agreement. As part of RCG’s
to discuss the important cyber work being done in Southern winning team, MIL will help to provide support in the functional
Maryland, especially when it supports and protects our areas of program management, service desk, desk side, data
Warfighters.” Hollingsworth, a veteran of the Navy’s Senior center, and asset management.
Executive Service, currently leads MIL’s Cyber Services Sector. Congratulations to the Treasury Team!

employee stories

the candidate processes, and ultimately determine what RPA
Can Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software, if any, would be a good fit for future implementation at
& MIL help streamline the Department CGFS.

The MIL team in Charleston is excited to have the opportunity to
of State’s financial operations? work on the RPA project, and is hopeful this type of technology
combined with the MIL team’s existing BPR and automation
By Kyle Brooks experience will bring great benefit to the Department.
RPA is an emerging technology that allows for efficient
automation of manual and repeatable tasks. This can involve
logging in and taking action in other systems, as well as managing What’s on your Mind?
email and communications. Although automating this type of
activity is not new, RPA makes the process easier and more cost By Steve Witt
effective than ever before. RPA software is designed to be used The average person thinks in the neighborhood of 50,000
by more functional personnel that understand processes rather thoughts per day!
than programming languages. This removes the need for a lengthy
development process. For example, without RPA, creating an If you believe in the Universal Law of Attraction, which states that
automated interface between two systems would likely require the like thoughts attract, and we get what we think about whether we
design and development of a custom middleware that could take know it or not and whether we like it or not, then what kind of
months to complete. But, with RPA the human process of logging thoughts and resultant outcomes are you attracting?
into one system and screen scraping the data, then logging into Are you unknowingly and unintentionally attracting things
the other system to process could be automated in weeks or even into both your private life and workplace that are unwelcome?
days. If our thoughts do indeed attract unto themselves similar to the

The Department of State’s Bureau of the Comptroller and Global way magnets attract, then perhaps it makes sense to pay more
Financial Services (CGFS) is currently exploring if RPA can attention to what we are thinking about.
help streamline its operations. To assist in the effort, CGFS is That little voice in our head which only we can hear, quite often
looking to MIL team members on the Systems Coordination and talks to us non-stop with seemingly unsolicited random thoughts
Implementation (SCI) team. These MIL team members are the that can be very negative at times. These negative thoughts
Business Process Reengineering (BPR) experts called upon to constitute ‘worry,’ which could be defined as time spent thinking
review and improve existing processes within Accounting, Claims, about and therefore facilitating things we do not want to happen!
Accounts Receivables, Reports and Reconciliation, Property, and Try introducing some discipline to that little voice in your head.
the Working Capital Fund. Working with each Department, SCI Discourage and ‘delete’ negative thoughts while encouraging and
is helping to identify processes that could be candidates for future rewarding good thoughts. You may be surprised and pleased with
RPA projects. Once the list is finalized, CGFS will work with a the results.
third-party firm with expert knowledge of RPA to help evaluate

winter 2018 | The MIL Connection | 5