[The Development Acceleration of Robotic Process Automation Solutions-Case Study of a German Health Authority]

Crises require flexible action and quick adjustments from both people and public institutions. The public sector and especially the German health authorities are massively challenged by the Covid-19 pandemic, starting in March 2020. The management of the partially exponentially growing process volumes due to short-term infection (superspreading) events must be carried out professionally in the shortest time possible and is subject to permanent reaction and adaptation to changing conditions. Existing structures and inefficient processes make this necessary scaling of processing increasingly difficult. In this article, approaches for an accelerated and flexible development of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solutions for the automation of existing administrative processes within an affected health authority in Germany are investigated by means of action research. As a result, approaches for a faster and less complex development of RPA solutions in a very fast scaling and at the same time heterogeneous IT system landscape were elaborated and evaluated.