Alteration of official records

Alteration of official records is the substantive editing of government documents — agency reports, scientific findings, transcripts of public meetings, archived versions of policy documents — after they have been issued or finalized, in ways that change their meaning. Concrete forms include silent edits to web-published reports, the destruction of contemporaneous notes, the replacement of archived versions with revised versions without changelog, and the alteration of inspectors general reports during the review process. Routine corrections clearly marked as such are not alteration; alteration is what happens when the change is substantive and undisclosed.