It seems initially they wanted to automate this process but it failed (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi-Schnipselmaschine https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi

It seems initially they wanted to automate this process but it failed (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi-Schnipselmaschine https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi-Schnipselmaschine). The software meant to handle this grew in cost without a lot of results. They stopped the software development and now they continue to assemble the documents per hand. Current status (in german): https://www.stasi-unterlagen-archiv.de/archiv/rekonstruktion/#c41320 https://www.stasi-unterlagen-archiv.de/archiv/rekonstruktion... I hope they get at least some more people closure on this before they die.