Using Process Mining to Improve Digital Service Delivery

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how Process Mining can optimize government personnel security screening by identifying bottlenecks and implementing interventions that significantly reduce process time and costs, supporting digital transformation efforts.

Contribution

It presents a comprehensive case study of applying Process Mining throughout the entire process improvement lifecycle in a government context, including pre- and post-intervention analysis.

Findings

Reduced security briefing times from 7 days to 46 hours

Decreased overall process time from 31 days to 26 days

Lowered involvement of non-security personnel and costs

Abstract

We present a case study of Process Mining (PM) for personnel security screening in the Canadian government. We consider customer (process time) and organizational (cost) perspectives. Furthermore, in contrast to most published case studies, we assess the full process improvement lifecycle: pre-intervention analyses pointed out initial bottlenecks, and post-intervention analyses identified the intervention impact and remaining areas for improvement. Using PM techniques, we identified frequent exceptional scenarios (e.g., applications requiring amendment), time-intensive loops (e.g., employees forgetting tasks), and resource allocation issues (e.g., involvement of non-security personnel). Subsequent process improvement interventions, implemented using a flexible low-code digital platform, reduced security briefing times from around 7 days to 46 hours, and overall process time from around 31 days to 26 days, on average. From a cost perspective, the involvement of hiring managers and security screening officers was significantly reduced. These results demonstrate how PM can become part of a broader digital transformation framework to improve public service delivery. The success of these interventions motivated subsequent government PM projects, and inspired a PM methodology, currently under development, for use in large organizational contexts such as governments.