Amsterdam March 22, 2022 – Takecarebnb, together with the Red Cross and others, is arranging the reception of Ukrainian refugees. Some 30,000 people have now signed up as potential host families. And this number is growing daily. The screening, matching and processing of the many thousands of applications in a very short time means an enormous effort for the Takecarebnb organization. In this effort, the help of a software robot that helps as a ‘digital volunteer’ with the administrative processing is more than welcome.

The volunteers of Takecarebnb are tasked with personally calling all people who apply to be host families. They explain what is involved in hosting refugees and the requirements for hosting. After this initial screening, a Certificate of Good Conduct (VOG) is requested for each potential host family.

Handling tens of thousands of VOG applications under high time pressure

Such an application for a VOG is submitted through the website of the Ministry of Justice and Security. Entering the personal data online for an application for a VOG quickly takes 3 to 4 minutes per application. In order to process tens of thousands of applications, 500 to 1,000 man hours are needed. These are valuable hours that Takecarebnb would rather use for other important tasks. Moreover, the immediate consequence of a lack of capacity here would be increased waiting times. And that is obviously not acceptable in this crisis situation.

Tacstone Technology and Takecarebnb deploy digital volunteer

One of the many volunteers active in screening potential host families at Takecarebnb, her partner Vincent Hoogveld told us about the situation at Takecarebnb. Vincent works as an RPA Developer at Tacstone Technology. He specializes in developing software robots that can take over administrative work. The link between the administrative workload at Takecarebnb on the one hand and the possible application of Robotic Process Automation(RPA) on the other was then quickly made.

IT Specialist Mart Kok of Takecarebnb was immediately open to the idea of deploying a software robot to handle the thousands of VOG applications. The VOG application process was already well known to Tacstone from previous client assignments, and Kok was able to quickly provide the necessary application data. Barely 24 hours later, RPA Developer Bram van Heuvelen had the robot script ready and Takecarebnb’s “first digital volunteer” could get to work.

Meanwhile, this digital volunteer has handled the first four thousand VOG applications quickly and flawlessly. There is still a considerable amount of work ahead, but fortunately the software robot is available 24 hours a day, does not take breaks and does not go on vacation.

UiPath offers Takecarebnb free licenses for RPA software

Tacstone uses the RPA platform of software vendor UiPath. Some time ago, UiPath launched the UiPath Bridge Program, an initiative intended to bridge the “gap” between nonprofit organizations and the adoption of RPA technology. Indeed, many nonprofit organizations lack the funding and/or resources to take advantage of new technologies such as RPA. With the Bridge program, UiPath is therefore making free software licenses available to these nonprofit organizations. Takecarebnb, of course, gratefully takes advantage of this offer.