Government agencies are increasingly looking to adopt practices of their counterparts in the private sector for taking paper documents and transforming them into an electronic format, according to Chuck Brooks, vice president and client executive for the Department of Homeland Security at Xerox.

A former legislative affairs director for DHS’ science and technology directorate, Brooks outlines new approaches many agencies could take toward document management in an article for the Jan. 20 edition of Federal Times.

New indexing and imaging tools and work-flow software have made digital document conversion a more achievable task for agencies as they increasingly use optical technologies for scanning, Brooks writes.

Brooks also lists the type of documents many agencies want to convert into electronic formats, including but not limited to files compiled on Social Security, veteransâ€™ benefits, workers compensation, human resources and records related to security, financial and customer service functions.

Handwritten letters, sticky notes and microfilm could also be scanned and then put into a database for indexing and tracking by a computer, according to Brooks.