Since its inception, ITS has assembled archives of some 50 million Holocaust- and post-war-era documents in Bad Arolsen, Germany relating to approximately 17.5 million civilian victims of Germany's National Socialist (Nazi) regime. ITS officials traditionally administered the service based on an understanding that ITS was established to act primarily as a tracing service for victims of Nazi war crimes. To this end, access to information in the Bad Arolsen archives had been limited almost exclusively to civilian victims of such crimes and their descendants. Beginning in the late 1990s, the U.S. Recent Developments and Outstanding Issues

In May 2006, after more than five years of debate, and in response to increasing public and political pressure, the International Commission of the ITS unanimously agreed to amend the 1955 Bonn Accords to open the ITS archives to researchers and make digital copies of archived materials available to designated institutions in Commission member states. Holocaust Memorial Museum highlight several priorities and concerns relating to the future of the archives, including ensuring prompt digitization and transfer of the files to research institutions in Commission member states; designing and implementing a classification system to allow for more efficient searches of archived and digitized documents; continuing to reduce the backlog of requests for information from the archives, and training and hiring staff to better assist researchers in navigating the archives; and, in the long term, contemplating reform of what many consider a cumbersome administrative and oversight structure. Some 17.9 million digital images making up the archives' Incarceration/Concentration Camp Collection and a so-called Central Names Index of about 17.5 million names which appear in the archives have been transferred to the Holocaust Museum thus far. Members of the public will be able to access these files with the assistance of museum staff beginning in January 2008.
On November 28, 2007, the International Tracing Service (ITS) opened its vast archives of materials on victims of Germany's National-Socialist (Nazi) regime to the public, granting direct access to the archives for the first time since their establishment shortly after World War II. Access to information in the archives was previously limited to victims of Nazi crimes and their descendants, and as recently as 2006, ITS had a recorded backlog of over 400,000 requests for information. As part of its May 2006 agreement to open the archives, the 11-nation International Commission overseeing ITS agreed to provide a digital copy of the collections to designated research institutions in Commission member states. To date, digital copies of the archives' Central Name Index of about 17.5 million names, and of some 13 million records documenting deportations to Nazi concentration camps, have been transferred to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Museum officials expect these documents to be accessible to the public by early 2008, and hope that all the ITS archives will be digitized and transferred to the museum by late 2010. Access to the archives has been an issue of ongoing interest to many Members of Congress. This report will be updated as events warrant.