Mass process

In GDR usage, a mass process was synonymous with a big data project by the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) on the citizens of the GDR. The archive located there, Department XII, accepted 5.95 million verification requests in 1979; in 1986 it was more than double that of 12.8 million. Dealing with this burden of tasks was called a “mass process” in the ministry throughout the 1980s.

The number of employees in Department XII grew only slightly in relation to the increased applications. At a central service conference on July 7, 1986, Erich Mielke's deputy , Major General Gerhard Neiber , demanded “the mass processes of checking, recording, registering, archiving and providing information, that is, what has been taken for granted by the operative employees since the existence of Department XII is going to be much more rational and effective. "

The archive tried to get the mass processes under control mainly by pushing ahead with the expansion of electronic data processing from around 1980 with the SAVO project (system of automatic preselection). However, the spying of GDR citizens by IMs increased so drastically on the instructions of the ministry that - apart from problems with digitization known from other archives - the mass processes often ended in data chaos. With the turnaround and the associated dissolution of the GDR, this term also disappeared.

literature

Philipp Springer: The normal department XII. In: Philipp Springer, Karsten Jedlitschka (Hrsg.): The memory of the state security. ISBN 978-3-525-31033-5 , p. 113 ff.
Rüdiger Bergien: “Big Data” as a vision: introduction of computers and organizational change in the BKA and State Security (1967–1989). In: Contemporary historical research . Issue 2, 2017, pp 258-285 ( zeithistorische-forschungen.de ).

Individual evidence

^ Department XII (Central Information, Storage). Retrieved on December 25, 2019 (MfS Lexicon, website of the Federal Commissioner for Stasi Records [BStU]).

↑ SAVO was the first computer system in the Stasi Archives. Later it became SIRA - System of Information Research of HV A. bstu.de.

[1] Department XII (Central Information, Storage). Retrieved on December 25, 2019 (MfS Lexicon, website of the Federal Commissioner for Stasi Records [BStU]).