Prague 3: Thanks to a software robot at the office, a third of jobs will be lost
The City Hall of Prague 3 is introducing robotic process automation, which can also be seen at other offices. The novelty should have a significant impact on the functioning of the Office. “During the next five years, ie by the end of the next election period, up to a third of the approximately 300 jobs in our office will be lost due to automation,” says the Deputy Mayor of Prague 3 Štěpán Štrébl (Pirates).
Prague 3 two years ago identified a problem in collecting fines for parking. The city district did not manage to handle tens of thousands of such fines. “The software that officials have to work with is a clicker. It is a repetitive activity. Parking fines are what this robo-employee will focus on. It will help us catch up with the shortage so that no fine expires, ”explains Štrébl.
“In this case, no one will lose their place.” Rather, we will avoid having to hire other people. Existing employees will be able to concentrate their efforts on work with higher added value – they will conduct administrative proceedings with those who refuse to pay parking fines. It is an activity where one has to use the brain, as opposed to clicking into a numbness, which basically corresponds to working in a classic Czech assembly plant. Until recently, we had this assembly plant in our center of Prague. Every major part of the city has it, “the deputy mayor describes.
Prague 3 has introduced the so-called Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Globally, this is a field with strong growth. Thanks to this, the Romanian startup UiPath, for example, became a unicorn that recently entered the New York Stock Exchange and the Czech fund Credo Ventures valued its investments there in billions.
The magnifier has data from the results of a pilot two-month test proven in cooperation with Neoops and Hypera.
1372 cases were processed during the vehicle operator confirmation process. Of these, 98.5 percent were successful. Only 21 cases were not processed. The reasons include, for example, the embassy’s license plate number and the like. Confirmation of the operator’s shelf life took 56 seconds.
The second process was the generation of calls for vehicle operators to pay the specified amounts and dispatch. 855 cases were processed, of which 77.1 percent were successful (calls generated or before processing). Another 20.6 percent are waiting for calls to be delivered. Twenty cases were not processed. The reason is the ASDP, ISZR or Data Box system response. The average processing time of one case was two to four minutes depending on the ASDP response.
The third process was the generation of calls to the operator to pay the specified amounts and its dispatch. Over 51 percent of cases were sent by data box, 214 by mail, 16 handed over to the processor and 176 awaiting processing.
“During the pilot project, a total of 643 calls were generated, as of September 9, 2021, 148 × 500 – 70,000 crowns were paid,” states the materials of Prague 3.
“This is the first swallow.” We will start with those activities that are routine and burden us the most, but we will gradually move to more complex activities, “says Štrébl.
The City Hall of Prague 3 is one of those that is trying to introduce not entirely common things within the Czech state administration. An application programmed by the deputy mayor was published as open source. Subsidy software has also been released as open source. About IT at work Štrébl drive spoke at interview for Lupa.