FormFest 2025 Recap: Goodbye Manual Paper Forms: Using AI to Review Paper Forms

Goodbye Manual Paper Forms: Using AI to Review Paper Forms

Since its debut in 2023, the Doorway Housing Portal has allowed Bay Area residents to submit an affordable housing application entirely with their mobile phone in under 10 minutes. This massive digital transformation has greatly reduced barriers to affordable housing. While paper forms remain an accessible alternative for users who are unable or prefer not to use technology, their submission and processing create significant challenges for agency staff. In this FormFest session, the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority (BAHFA) team shares how they leveraged artificial intelligence (AI) document reader technology to automatically scan handwritten applications, translate them into English, and check them for accuracy. 

Main Points

• Bay Area governments collaborated to create the Doorway Housing Portal, a centralized housing portal that simplifies access to affordable housing.
• BAHFA uses AI-powered document readers to convert paper housing applications into digital records, reducing administrative burden while preserving paper access.
• The Doorway Portal’s AI is narrowly scoped to interpretation only; BAHFA’s administrative team is responsible for making decisions based on the information collected in these forms.

Lessons Learned

• Local governments can work together to optimize platforms and make it easier for residents to access government services.
• AI tools and low-code solutions can be extremely useful for programs that rely on paper form submissions.
• Keeping a human in the loop remains essential.

Actionable Takeaways

• Governments should design digital services that preserve non-digital access, ensuring equity for residents who cannot or choose not to use online systems.
• AI can be most effective when applied to repetitive, administrative tasks—such as document processing—rather than high-stakes decision-making.
• Multilingual AI models can help improve accessibility and equity when serving diverse populations.
• Transparency about how AI is used, and where human oversight remains, can help build public trust in government technology initiatives.

In this session, speakers Izzie Hirschy-Reyes, Glenn Brown, Barbara “Babs” Deffenderfer, and Barry Roeder discussed how Bay Area governments are using AI to analyze paper forms for their housing portal, Doorway. Through this AI model, BAHFA is able to reduce administrative burden while also ensuring that access to affordable housing is not locked behind technology.  

The Doorway Housing Portal acts as a “one-stop shop” for Bay Area residents to find affordable housing. Local governments within the Bay Area have worked together to create one platform for residents. The Doorway Portal requires a short form to start the process, but has been optimized to be completed within 10 minutes. Once Bay Area residents have advanced through the process and increased their placement in the lottery, they receive a secondary application that can be completed either electronically or on paper. 

“Providing a paper option is critical to the services we provide at Doorway.”

Glenn Brown
Doorway Technical Operations Manager, Bay Area Housing Finance Authority

Given challenges like accessibility to digital tools, the digital literacy gap, and fear of putting personal information online, it is crucial for governments to continue to have paper form options available for constituents. BAHFA is streamlining this process by using AI platforms on Microsoft Power Apps to automate the process of converting paper forms into electronic forms. Microsoft Power Apps’ AI document reader capabilities make it possible for these paper forms to be converted and uploaded to the Doorway portal with a 94 percent accuracy rate. However, BAHFA is committed to keeping people in the loop. They highlighted that Doorway’s AI model is limited to interpreting paper responses and not involved in the decision-making process. 

Overall, BAHFA’s approach exemplifies how governments can leverage AI to reduce administrative burden while preserving paper access, promoting equity, and maintaining public trust through transparency and human oversight. By creating a centralized housing portal for the Bay Area and using AI-powered tools to process paper applications, Doorway has made it significantly easier for applicants to find and apply for housing while respecting the reality of the digital divide. Ultimately, the speakers highlighted that dynamic digital tools alone are not sufficient; paper workflows still matter and AI is most effective when narrowly scoped to interpretation rather than decision-making. Doorway demonstrates how combining accessibility, human review, and AI adoption for certain administrative tasks can create more equitable and efficient digital service programs.