they don’t use back-ups? No storage? No archives?
Apparently when it comes to government spending, record keeping is not a high priority.
In 1992 as I was nearing completion of a book project developed on my first computer, I wised up and took backup copies to work each Monday after working on the project over the weekend. Way overdue, but too far along to lose it all to a house fire or flood while I was at work.
I may still have some of those 5-1/4” floppies that I could loan to the gubermint - anything to help.
In doing genealogy work on ancestors in the mid-19th Century, I kept getting stymied by the number of courthouse fires. Finally an experienced researcher told me that Courthouse arson was the preferred method to use when you were going to lose a court case. Too bad the USAF contract manager wasn’t a genealogist.