9,360 of May 7, 2018, which grants it as the main body of Archival Documents Management System (in Portuguese: Sistema de Gestão de Documentos de Arquivo – SIGA[1]) of the federal government: "to guide the main organizations and entities of the federal Executive Power in the implementation of document management programs; oversee the application of procedures and technical operations related to the production, registration, classification, control of the processing, use and evaluation of documents, to modernize government archival services; promote the collection of permanent guard documents for technical treatment, preservation and dissemination, to guarantee full access to information, in support of governmental decisions of a political–administrative nature and to the citizen in the defense of their rights, aiming to encourage the production of scientific and cultural knowledge; and supervise and apply the national policy archives, established by the National Council of Archives (Conselho Nacional de Arquivo – CONARQ)".

[8] The access to information and documents of the National Archives of Brazil is enhanced by various dissemination actions, such as electronic research sites, exhibitions and publications.

[10] For José Honório Rodrigues, director from 1958 to 1964, the National Archives "was stagnant, impervious to initiative, as a model of archaic institution, a ghost of other times".

[11] In order to change that situation, as director of the National Archives, José Honório Rodrigues himself achieved the approval of a new Regulation by Decree No.

44,862, of November 21, 1958, which defines the Archive as a national distribution, establishes the archives policy, its attributions and objectives, defends and extends the collection selected throughout the national territory and in all sources of federal documentation; it extends to the defense by the preservation of documents in films, discs, photographs; it creates research and historical information services, relating them to equal services in the Armed Forces and in other public and private institutions".

With the approval in 1975 of a new regulation an important step was taken, when the idea of document management was incorporated, through the Pre-Archive Division, which was installed itself in Brasilia the following year, demonstrating the Archives concern with its actions before the public administration in the capital.

The result of an agreement between the Ministry of Justice and the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV), the Administrative Institutional Modernization Project of the National Archive was signed in 1981, as the subsequent passage of the Archives to the autonomous body of the direct administration in the structure of the Ministry and the transfer to the building attached to the old Casa da Moeda, in January 1985, the interest of international organizations in that decade was awakened.

In Brasilia, while it does not havea specific building, the AN uses since 1988 part of the facilities of the National Press (Imprensa Nacional), having 18 thousand meters of shelves for guard of documents in its regional coordination – at the moment, the only one outside Rio de Janeiro.

On February 7, 2023, heavy rains that fell in the city of Rio de Janeiro caused water to infiltrate the National Archive building.

However, according to its employees, the rain, combined with the condition of the building, caused the destruction of documents dating back more than 400 years, related to the Portuguese royal family.

Correspondence and legislation originated around the Portuguese ultramarine empire, the archives brought with the court of João VI in 1808, among others, describe the beginning of Brazilian society.

With the rupture of the colonial past, the formation of the imperial state can be known through the documents generated by the ministries and the judiciary, such as the Casa da Suplicação, the General Audit of Marinha, in addition to the original Constitution of 1824 and the Golden Law.

Among the documents produced by the republican regime, stand out the entry records of immigrants, patents of inventions, books of civil registry, civic and criminal proceedings, sightings of UFOs, urbanization and sanitation projects related to the first years of the 20th century.

In addition to the documents of the information and counter-information body of the military regime, personal archives and private entities are important, including Eusébio de Queirós, the Duke of Caxias, Bertha Lutz, Luis Carlos Prestes, Salgado Filho, San Tiago Dantas, Goes Monteiro, Apolônio de Carvalho, Mário Lago, Zelia Pedreira Abreu Magalhães, Maria Beatriz Nascimento, the presidents of Republic Floriano Peixoto, Prudente de Morais, Afonso Pena, João Goulart, the Brazilian Academy of Letters, the Brazilian Federation for Female Progress, the Institute of Pesquisa e Estudos Sociais (IPES) and the Association of Brazilian Archivists.

The collection of sound documents covers the period from 1902 to the year 1990 and consists of more than 11 thousand articles, including records and audio tapes of National Agency fond, Presidency of the Republic, Radio Mayrink Veiga, Humberto Franceschi, Radio Jornal do Brasil, Casa Edison and Public Amusement Censorship Service, as well as collections of classical and popular music.