7 Workflows Every Government Agency Should Automate

Every government organization operates differently. On both the local and state level, each organization has its own structures, systems, and unique way of getting things done.  

That said, after working with government agencies across the country, we consistently see the same workflows creating the same friction — regardless of agency type, size, or mission. They involve too many handoffs, too much manual coordination, and too much time spent tracking down approvals or chasing signatures.

The following seven workflows show up nearly everywhere and typically touch multiple departments. They're high-impact when automated, and they're all buildable in SimpliGov — without involving IT every time you need to make a change.

Let's dive in.  

1. Request for Personnel Action

A single request for personnel action can require sign-off from a supervisor, a department head, HR, finance, and legal, often in a specific order, often with documentation attached at each step.

When this process runs on email threads and shared drives, requests stall. Approvers miss notifications. Someone submits the wrong form version. HR can't tell where a request is in the queue without making a phone call.

Automating the RPA workflow means every request moves through a defined path — with the right approvers notified at the right time, attachments collected automatically, and a clear audit trail from submission to completion. When the process runs reliably, agencies hire faster, catch pay discrepancies before they become equity issues, and spend less time on administrative back-and-forth with the people they're trying to retain.

Tips for automating personnel action requests

• ‍Map the approval chain before you build. Use conditional routing to handle variations by action type, pay grade, or department. A promotion may require different approvers than a transfer, and building that logic in from the start means the right people see the right requests without manual triage.‍
• Connect your workflow tool to your HRIS. This reduces manual data entry and lets HR system changes trigger workflow actions.‍
• Reserve eSignature for steps that legally require a signature. It shouldn't stand in for an approval. Sending an envelope every time someone signs off on an action adds cost quickly. Approvals can happen inside the workflow; eSignature is for the final, legally binding step.

2. Purchasing Requests

When done manually, each step in the purchasing and procurement process is a potential delay. A request sits in someone's inbox over a long weekend. A budget code is entered incorrectly and the whole thing has to restart. No one can tell the requester where their order stands without digging through email.

An automated purchasing workflow keeps requests moving, routes them correctly the first time, and gives everyone involved — including the requester — visibility into where things stand. When purchasing moves faster, everything downstream moves faster too: projects don't stall waiting on approved vendors, service contracts don't lapse, and staff aren't spending time tracking down the status of their own requests.

Tips for automating purchase requests

• Route by threshold and category. Add conditional logic to your request form so it routes based on spend threshold, vendor type, or request category. A $500 office supply order doesn't need the same approval chain as a $50,000 service contract.
• Verify budget before review. Make budget information and funding source required fields on the initial request, and build in a budget verification step before the request moves forward.
• Keep requesters informed and policies visible. Set up automatic notifications at each stage so requesters aren't left wondering. Attach your purchasing policy directly to the request form so employees see the rules before they submit, not after their request gets kicked back.

3. Ethics / Outside Activity / Conflict of Interest Disclosure

Ethics disclosures are legally required, time-sensitive, and almost universally managed through paper forms and email. Employees submit disclosures to their supervisor, who forwards them to an ethics officer, who logs them somewhere, who follows up if something is missing. The process is prone to gaps — and in a compliance context, gaps create organizational risk.

Automating this workflow is less about efficiency and more about accuracy and reliability. Submissions get timestamped, reviews get documented, and overdue disclosures trigger automatic reminders. Nothing falls through the cracks because there are no cracks.  

Tips for automating ethics and conflict of interest disclosures

• Trigger submissions on a schedule or event. Annual or event-triggered workflows prompt employees to disclose at set intervals, so policies are applied equally across every employee.
• Set a review window with escalation. Build in a review step with a defined response window. If the ethics officer doesn't respond within that timeframe, the workflow escalates automatically.
• Keep an auditable record. Store completed disclosures in a searchable, auditable record instead of a filing cabinet.

4. IT Tool Access & Device Requests  

When someone joins an agency, transfers to a new role, or leaves, there's a cascade of IT tasks: provision accounts, assign permissions, issue or recover devices, update access across systems.  

New employees wait days for access to the systems they need. Departing employees have accounts that stay active longer than they should. IT spends time on routine requests that could move on their own. Done manually, this process is slow, inconsistent, and a security risk.

An automated IT request workflow routes each request to the right person, tracks completion at each step, and creates a record of what was provisioned, when, and by whom. New employees get productive faster, departing employees don't leave open access behind them, and IT spends its time on work that actually requires technical expertise.

Tips for automating ITtool access and device requests

• Connect the onboarding trigger to HR. When HR initiates an onboarding workflow, it can automatically launch an IT access request with no separate submission required.
• Use a checklist for offboarding. A checklist-style workflow makes sure every access point is explicitly revoked. The workflow shouldn't close until every item is confirmed.
• Standardize device and access packages. Route device requests through an asset tracking integration so inventory stays current automatically. Role-based templates can predefine the access package for each job classification, so IT isn't making the same provisioning decisions from scratch for every new hire.

5. Asset Tracking and Management

Government agencies manage a significant amount of physical inventory — vehicles, equipment, technology, furniture — and the records that support it are often scattered across spreadsheets, legacy systems, and institutional memory. When something needs to be repaired, transferred, or disposed of, the process involves a lot of manual coordination.

Automating asset management workflows doesn't replace your asset management system — it connects the processes around it. Checkout requests, maintenance requests, transfer approvals, and disposal authorizations all move through defined workflows with the right approvals, documentation, and notifications. The result is an asset record that stays current without anyone chasing assets or recreating the record after the fact.  

Tips for automating asset tracking and management

• Automate checkout reminders. Build checkout and return workflows with automatic reminders. An asset that's 30 days past its return date should trigger a notification, not require someone to check a spreadsheet.
• Route maintenance by asset type or location. Send maintenance requests to the right team automatically, with a defined escalation path if a request isn't acknowledged within a set window. Attach condition documentation, such as photos and inspection reports, directly to the workflow record so maintenance and disposal decisions are well supported.
• Connect disposal to finance. Link disposal workflows to your finance system so asset retirement is properly documented for accounting.

6. Executive Reviews and Approvals

Every agency has a category of work that requires executive sign-off — contracts, policies, communications, budget requests, strategic decisions.

Getting a request exec-ready takes coordination: the right documents attached, the right context included, the full record of how it got there. When something is missing, an executive has to chase it down before they can act — and whoever submitted the request often has no visibility into where it stands or what's holding it up.

An automated executive review workflow makes sure the right information is assembled and ready before anything lands in front of an executive — so when they get to it, they can act on it. The decisions driving critical projects move faster, the people waiting on them have visibility into where things stand, and the full record of the request is documented automatically.

Tips for automating executive reviews and approvals

• Set deadline-triggered escalations. If a review is overdue, the workflow notifies a delegate or an EA automatically.
• Separate routine approvals from complex reviews. Sort them at intake so each runs on its own track.
• Use parallel approvals when order doesn't matter. When sequencing isn't required, multiple executives can review at the same time, cutting days off processes that don't need to happen one after another.

7. Constituent-Facing Workflows

What's constituent-facing looks very different across departments and agencies. A county might handle permit applications and inspection requests. A state agency might manage benefit enrollment and re-certification. A court might process case-related forms and requests for records.

What doesn't vary is the pattern: constituents submit something, it goes into a manual process, they wait, they call to check status, staff spend time answering the same questions, and the whole thing takes longer than it should.

Automating constituent-facing workflows means the constituent gets confirmation immediately, their submission moves through a defined process without anyone manually picking it up, and they're notified when something changes without having to call. For the agency, that means fewer inbound contacts, faster service delivery, and staff time freed up for work that actually requires a human.

Tips for automating constituent-facing workflows

• Build in language access. If your agency serves constituents who speak languages other than English, your intake forms and automated notifications should reflect that. SimpliGov supports multilingual forms so constituents can complete them in their preferred language.
• Design for mobile first. A significant share of constituents will open your forms on a phone. Forms should work on mobile from the start, not be retrofitted.
• Automate status updates, not just submission. Constituents still need information after they hit submit. A workflow that notifies them when their request moves to review, when a decision is made, or when something else is needed cuts down on inbound calls. Track call and visit volume before and after launch. That reduction is one of the clearest ways to show the operational impact of automation.

Building these workflows in SimpliGov

Government processes aren't generic, and a workflow tool that only handles simple scenarios will show its limits fast. The right platform lets you configure each workflow to reflect your actual approval chains, routing logic, and terminology — and when something changes, the people who own the process can update it themselves, without writing code or opening an IT ticket.

When all of these workflows live in the same platform, you're not stitching together a separate tool for forms, another for signatures, and another for reporting. Information flows from one step to the next without someone manually moving it — and without the handoff gaps that come from systems that don't talk to each other. That said, role-based access means everyone sees what they need to do their job, and nothing they shouldn't, so shared data doesn't come at the cost of security.

All seven of these workflows are live in SimpliGov today, built by real government agencies and configured to their actual processes. Most agencies start with one or two, usually the ones causing the most friction or manual work, and expand from there. Tell us which process is causing the most friction. In a 30-minute session, we'll map its approval chain with you and show how it would run in SimpliGov. Map a workflow with us.