The National Archives carries out its mission under an administrative statute that sets strategies and plans of work for each department. The Archives operates through four departments.  They are:

1. The Central Administrative Board: It works under the leadership of the Chief Executive who is also the Archives’ President. The President’s office staff and the Research and Archival Sciences Unit are directly managed under this board.
   
   
2. The General Department of Record Collection and Preservation:It is responsible for the implementation of the National Archives’ policy regarding the collection, preservation, and registration of the documents of contemporary Egyptian history. It also makes these documents accessible to researchers. It supervises document storage facilities, prepares reports of records restoration, and saves all the accomplished work. Additionally, it supervises the contribution of the Archives’ deputies in the standing committees of the various departments. It consists of four sub-departments:
   • record appraisal,
   • record collection,
   • record registration, and
   • research service.
   
   
3. The Department of Technical Affairs: It takes charge of classifying, cataloguing, translating, and exchanging documents. It also undertakes preparing an index of the Archives’ catalogues, as well as, historical summaries. It edits certain groups of documents, and makes them available to researchers. It consists of three sub-departments:
   • cataloguing,
   • classifying, and
   • translation.
   
   
4. The General Department of Record Restoration and Preservation: It is responsible for records’ restoration, as well as, preservation, binding, and photocopying. To these functions, four separate sub-departments have been assigned:
   • preservation,
   • microfilm,
   • binding, and
   • photocopying.

Documents are written in many languages, including Arabic, Turkish, English, French, Hebrew, Italian, and German; a few are written in Amharic. An enormous number date from the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries; whereas older eras such as: the Abbasid, Fatimid, Ayyubid, Mameluk, and Ottoman Empire periods are covered in fewer numbers of Roznamas (almanacs) and legal deeds.