Furthermore, some governments are hostile to their predecessors or successors, and so records may be altered or destroyed intentionally. Thus, a government may not be the best place, and should not be the only place, to archive the electronic data that ensure the continued maintenance and storage of the public record. Many governments have a separate agency, like the National Archives and Records Administration in the United States or the Public Record Office in Great Britain, designed to take responsibility for the continuance of the public record. Other governments rely on the national library of the country to fulfil this function. Once a page is printed, the information on the page is static and unchanging.
New information requires the printing of new pages.
With electronic information the files can be updated relatively easily and quickly. Data can be altered in one file without an accompanying change in other related files. To preserve such potentially volatile information, data specialists recommend regular back-ups of computer files. Copying the file to another medium or system, and carefully labelling the files with the contents and date, assures the preservation of a snapshot in time. Regular back-ups also provide insurance against disasters that may destroy the current database.