The only remaining and still readable historical database of the former Security Service is the ZSKO system. The system, its name being an acronym of Zautomatyzowany [or Zintegrowany] System Kartotek Operacyjnych (Automatic/Integrated System of the Operational Card Indexes), was developed as a tool mirroring the general information card index (see Włodzimierz Lechnio’s Article “Card Indexes in the Institute of National Remembrance Archives” on this webpage), and – in perspective – also integrated the systems of the operational information evaluation. The database currently accessible is in fact the content of two back-ups of the system, saved respectively in 1988 and 1990, and covers only a part of the original database. The vast erasures made in the original database at the turn of 1989–1990, and the very fact that the remains of it are reconstructed from back-ups, make it obvious that the accessible ZSKO records are only a fragment of the former system. However, the existing records in many cases mirror data not existing in other holdings (card indexes and files) due to the mass weeding of the Security Service paperwork and archives in 1989 and 1990; that event makes the content of the salvaged ZSKO records particularly valuable. The ZSKO database is accessible only internally – however, researchers asking for information concerning persons, and persons affected [by repression] are provided with ZKSO data as well as from ‘traditional’ card indexes. The details of ZSKO history and functioning are discussed in Tadeusz Ruzikowski’s paper published in volume three of the Przegląd Archiwalny Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej (Archival Review of the Institute of National Remembrance) from 2010 (in Polish) and in Wojciech Sawicki’s presentation from the Colloquia Jerzy Skowronek dedicata conference held in 2016 (in English).

The IPN Archive also has a collection of magnetic tapes containing a vast amount of data produced in the former Security Service. However, still in progress is the multi-stage process of reading the data, its migration to safe data-carriers, recognition of the data character and original system affiliation, and – lastly – its declassification.

For further information about historical electronic databases used by Communist security police in Poland, please see Mariusz Kwaśniak’s paper “Elektroniczne bazy danych Służby Bezpieczeństwa” (Security Service Electronic Databases) published in 2014 in volume seven of Przegląd Archiwalny  (in Polish), Franciszek Dąbrowski’s chapter “Solid Modernity: Data Storage and Information Circuits in the Communist Security Police in Poland,” published in the book Intelligence Agencies, Technology and Knowledge Production: Data Processing and Information Transfer in Secret Services during the Cold War, ed. R. Bergien, D. Gerstenberger, C. Goschler, (Routledge, 2022) (in English), Wojciech Wabik’s paper “Wybrane zagadnienia z koncepcji, tworzenia oraz eksploatacji Powszechnego Elektronicznego Systemu Ewidencji Ludności – PESEL MSW” (Selected problems of concept, building and usage of the Universal Electronic System of the PESEL civil census of the Ministry of Internal Affairs), published in 2019 in volume twelve of the Przegląd Archiwalny Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej (in Polish).