Xerox’s Charles Brooks: Gov’t Agencies Seek to Accelerate Record Digitization

Charles Brooks, vice president and client executive for the Department of Homeland Security at Xerox Corp., sees an increased support from the FBI and DHS in converting government records to digital form.

Brooks wrote in an op-ed published in Federal Times Wednesday that he believes “digitizing records reduces costs by speeding up document capture, recognition, and retrieval.”

The FBI‘s Criminal Justice Information Services division moved to modernize its biometric file system last week when it finished converting millions of records and fingerprint cards to digital format.

He wrote that the DHS’ Citizenship and Immigration Service is also working to clone a huge amount of immigration data and transfer migration images to the Enterprise Document Management System.

Rendell Jones, associate director for the management directorate at CIS who oversees the digital technology conversion, also manages records submitted from the offices of the chief financial officer, information technology and human capital and training, among others, Brooks wrote.

Jones is focusing on the transformation program with the goal of transitioning to a digital processing system, according to Brooks.

“When the transformation program is completed, it will serve as a model for other parts of DHS and the federal government on how to convert complex records into digital form,” Brooks wrote.