Nobody plans their evacuation around a filing cabinet, which is exactly why the filing cabinet is usually what gets left behind.
The official room-by-room checklist of what to safeguard and how - more complete than most people's own list.
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Birth certificates, insurance policies, medical records, school records — knowing where the originals live does not help if the building they live in floods. A copy, physical or scanned, kept somewhere else entirely, is the actual protection.
Add what a family with children needs beyond the standard list: immunisation records, any current prescriptions with dosages, custody paperwork if it applies, and your child's school enrolment details. These are the ones hardest to replace quickly and most likely to matter in the first week.
A folder in the go bag and a second copy at a relative's house, or scanned to a password-protected cloud account, covers both the evacuation and the total-loss scenario. One copy in the house you are leaving covers neither.
It is better than nothing, but a phone can be lost, damaged or run out of battery. A scanned copy saved somewhere else, plus a physical copy, is more reliable than a photo alone.
For most practical purposes during an emergency, no - a clear copy is for your own reference and for speeding up replacement, not a legal substitute for the original.
Part of our guide to Emergency prep for families with kids.