The Maryland State Ethics Commission’s mission is to encourage public confidence in the impartiality and independent judgement of State officials and employees by administering the provisions of the Public Ethics Law. This is done by administering provisions requiring government officials and employees to disclose their financial affairs and set certain minimum ethical standards for the conduct of State and local business. The Maryland State Ethics Commission - among its other duties - creates and provides forms for each document required by the Public Ethics Law for public record.

Performing this task manually is overwhelming and can take nearly a year for staff to complete. This ultimately takes time, staff resources, and cost away from the innovative and meaningful work as part of the organization’s critical mission.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many agencies and organizations had to shift business operations to accommodate for remote/virtual work. The Maryland State Ethics Commission worked with The Canton Group to create an automation bot that could perform these manual repetitive tasks, opening up their employees to focus on carrying out their mission. Partnering with UiPath, The Canton Group leveraged robotic process automation to create FReD, an attended bot designed to review the financial disclosure statements in the same manner a member of the Maryland State Ethics Commission staff would do.

By the Numbers

Leveraging FreD during the pandemic enabled the Maryland State Ethics Commission to experience a 99% reduction in human time spent reviewing submissions. What had previously taken employees roughly 3,300 hours to review all yearly submissions (approximately 20,000) was reduced to a mere 40 hours.

The following metrics demonstrate how FReD improved efficiency, allowing the Maryland State Ethics Commission staff to spend less time on redundant administrative tasks and direct their time and resources to mission critical work.

Approx. Statements Audited 2020-2022