With AI, more efficient mailrooms help state agencies meet their mission faster
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COMMENTARY | By applying AI-powered intelligent document processing to specific mailroom workstreams, government agencies can glean and apply best practices not only to their mailroom operations.
State government agency leaders have long prioritized operating more efficient and effective programs. Technology has allowed them to streamline and automate processes while improving the government customer experience for people interacting with their programs.
As technology evolves and offers faster paths to increased efficiency, state leaders must prioritize how, when, and where to implement solutions to preserve operational continuity and effective customer service.
Foundational Considerations for Implementing Efficiency Solutions
A thoughtful, controlled implementation of efficiency solutions allows agency leaders to select the right option for optimizing a specific area of operations while maintaining public trust and creating a platform for long-term success.
- Lead with an operational challenge. Resist the urge to jump to the latest tech solutions immediately. Instead, focus on solving real, persistent pain points, such as operational barriers that your staff encounters every day.
- Assess available tools. Lean on subject matter experts and delivery partners who know your operations. Solutions should enhance — not replace — human judgment, with the problem driving the solution, not the other way around.
- Start small in a controlled setting. Introduce the solution in a well-defined, low-stakes environment. Begin with a pilot, validate results and then scale with confidence.
- Communicate transparency from the start. Open dialogue fosters trust. Engage partners early and address concerns, such as workforce impact, accuracy and oversight, to help ensure a smooth implementation.
Looking for a Practical Entry Point for Efficiencies? Check the Mail.
Mailrooms are practical places to introduce more efficiency. For instance, processing high volumes of documents arriving from various channels and in often inconsistent formats is time-consuming and labor-intensive. As a controlled environment with structured, repetitive processes, clear rules and existing human oversight, mailrooms have been proving grounds for automation.
Agency leaders have already achieved significant efficiencies through automation tools and workflows that streamline repetitive tasks. Sorting and routing incoming documents, for instance, can be done through optical character recognition technology. The digitization of hard-copy mail paired with cloud-based storage solutions eases information sharing. After successfully reducing many manual tasks, minimizing errors and accelerating processes in the mailroom, what’s next?
AI-Powered Intelligent Document Processing: A Pragmatic Next-Gen Solution
While automation has resulted in more efficient mailrooms, intelligent document processing, or IDP, powered by artificial intelligence takes it one step further. Building on existing digital infrastructure, IDP brings layered intelligence. Unlike traditional automation, IDP is seamlessly added on top of existing workflows without disrupting current systems. It independently and automatically extracts key fields from documents and offers more nuanced document interpretations, enabling faster routing and more informed human-driven decisions.
Streamlining One Mailroom Process for a Large Government Program
Despite their best efforts, many government programs that regularly communicate with participants find it challenging to keep their addresses current. For one state program serving millions of residents, handling returned mail with forwarding addresses was a persistent pain point. While the percentage of all mail returned this way was a small subset, handling thousands of pieces of mail meant time spent and costs incurred each month.
As a trusted partner, we led a pilot project to apply AI-powered IDP to existing mailroom automation.
- Operational challenges: In our back-office support, we could see the operational impact of the constant influx of returned forwarded mail. As we processed returned mail documents, there was an opportunity to deliver efficiencies for the program.
- Available tools: Even though high-speed scanning was part of automation efforts, the returned forwarded mail still required some manual intervention. We wanted to see if adding IDP capabilities could get the documents through the process faster and allow staff to shift from the repetitive work of the mailroom to other tasks that required human intervention.
- Controlled setting: This pilot provided an opportunity to validate results and scale to other areas of mailroom operations. We applied IDP enhancements, including machine learning, natural language processing and enhanced optical character recognition.
This pilot improved mailroom operations through greater efficiency and accuracy. By using IDP to identify and pass required data elements from document images more quickly, 83% of targeted returned mail processing were successfully automated, meaning 8,000 fewer documents manually processed each month. The enhanced automation achieved a 97% accuracy rate, requiring minimal manual intervention. By reducing the routine manual data entry workload by nearly 20%, staff previously processing this mail were redeployed to other tasks that often require more critical thinking.
A Broader Stamp of Approval for Better Government Customer Experience
By applying AI-powered IDP to specific mailroom workstreams, government agencies can glean and apply best practices not only to their mailroom operations but also to other areas that impact customer experience. As agencies streamline processes and optimize resource allocation across full programs, they ensure the timely and effective delivery of essential services and the efficient use of public funds.
Ferdinand Morales is a senior managing director at Maximus. He has more than 20 years of experience partnering with state and local governments to develop and operate large-scale health and human services programs.