The U.S. Government Accountability Office has removed from its web site archived records dating from the 1920s to the 1980s which contained names, Social Security numbers and other personal information for less than 1,000 individuals, the agency said (PDF) Friday.

The documents included, as an example, supporting documents from a 1970s audit of Defense Department travel vouchers, which contained names and personal identifiers of members of the armed forces.

The documents were discovered by the inspector general’s office of another federal agency and GAO was notified June 20.

“This was certainly regrettable but totally inadvertent,” said David Walker, Comptroller General and head of GAO. “We took immediate steps to correct the situation. Fortunately, these records are of little public interest, and we are aware of no compromises of any individual’s identity. Nonetheless, we are taking this very, very seriously.”

GAO has asked the Pentagon and private companies to review their own web sites to ensure that no similar data is available to the public, and while it says it does not believe that anyone misused the data, it has launched an effort to contact the individuals affected.

GAO has been in the process of digitizing and posting archival records to its web site, but was not reviewing them to ensure that sensitive personal information did not get posted. “We are doing everything possible to ensure that this does not happen again,” said Sallyanne Harper, GAO’s chief administrative officer. The agency has halted posting new archival material and will review existing material to ensure that such personal information is redacted.

Over the past few weeks numerous government computer security breaches have come to light in which sensitive personal data was put at risk, including at the Office of Naval Personnel, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Federal Trade Commission, the National Nuclear Security Agency, and the Veterans Administration.