Photo By Darrell Sydnor | Ellen Severson, deputy director for IT assessment, analysis, and assignment for DFAS...... read more read more
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Ellen Severson, deputy director for IT assessment, analysis, and assignment for DFAS was recognized at the Technet Cyber Conference, earning the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association International (AFCEA) 40 under Forty Award for her contributions in information technology, communications, and electronics for the defense, homeland security and intelligence communities.
“I know all the work I have done with my partners that work on the robotics program, in IT, ESS, and operations, and all of the value we have brought to our workforce is amazing,” Severson said. “Getting the recognition at the international level with the AFCEA is the cherry on the top. It’s just not what I’m doing at DFAS, what I’m doing for the IT industry; across the public, private, and federal level.”
Severson, who has worked at DFAS for 17 years, began her journey at the agency as an intern in 2007 when she attended the University of Kentucky. Her internship started in military pay and finance operations. From 2008-2021, she worked in operations as an analyst, accountant, lead then manager and later became the director of leveraging technology in IT.
Severson’s expertise and supervision was instrumental during the development of the robotic process automation (RPA) program. As a result of her leadership, I&T deployed over 142 bots since the RPA program began at DFAS, which has achieved an estimated efficiency impact saved is over 447,000 hours of manual work by employees and $17.6 million for the agency.
AI-generated content may be incorrect. “As an agency, RPA is something that we’ve embraced so much,” Severson said. “As a working capital agency, we’re always trying to be the most efficient that we can be so that we can focus on our number one customer, the warfighter.”
RPA takes a manual process and mimics the clicks that the user would do. A good example that would be ripe for automation if an employee conducts the exact process every day, such as pulling a report, extracting the data, and uploading it into another system. Severson’s team created bots to automate the process; the user can run the bot in the background, allowing employees to focus on other tasks.
Severson noted agency leadership praised the success of the RPA program, which resulted in her team providing guidance to other DoD agencies to develop their own RPA programs and building partnerships with the Department of Treasury and General Services Administration.
“It’s that feeling of we’re not just doing good at our agency but we’re sharing our lessons learned from our experiences with resources from other federal agencies so they can have awesome programs like ours,” Severson said.
Currently, Severson is continuing to oversee the RPA program as well as the artificial intelligence program, customer experience office, agile transformation and a few other missions in her organization. Severson expressed her excitement to be able to work with external and internal customers, evaluate their experiences, and strategize how DFAS can improve those experiences.
| Date Taken: | 06.11.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 06.13.2025 13:56 |
| Story ID: | 500579 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 19 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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