The Department of Health and Social Care is to develop a robotic process automation (RPA) tool to sort public queries and other correspondence sent to the department.

The DHSC has awarded Reading-based digital services firm Ceox a £90,000 contract to fulfil a nine-month project to develop an RPA service that could “sort and categorise incoming queries”. 

The firm will need to develop extensions for the tool allowing the department’s staff to access it through Microsoft Dynamics 365, as well as the DHSC’s in-house Scribe software for handling queries and parliamentary questions. The RPA application will also need to integrate with Microsoft’s Power Apps suite of programs.

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The contract with Ceox came into effect yesterday, and the first stage of work will involve a “process-mapping” workshop in which the two parties will “review and validate required features [and] define DHSC process steps for email and web”.

Work will then progress to analysis of the extent to which these requirements tally with existing departmental processes and tech infrastructure.

The discovery phase will then conclude with “presentation of analysis and summary of proposed design and implementation plan of the next project phase”.

Implementation will then begin, including the delivery of testing and support services, and training for civil servants.

Ceox, which is under contract until 2 April 2021, will then be expected to deploy the technology and provide “support of the go-live process”.