Participants at the 4th General Assembly session held in Amsterdam in adopted a Resolution that each member country should establish a central point of contact within its police structure; this was the forerunner of today's National Central Bureau NCB. The General Assembly remains the Organization's supreme governing body, meeting once a year and taking all the major decisions affecting general policy, the resources needed for international cooperation, working methods, finances and programmes of activities.
By , specialized departments had been established to deal with criminal records, currency counterfeiting and passport forgery.
At this time, a comprehensive general records system comprised name index cards filed both alphabetically and phonetically , legal documents such as identity details and vehicle registrations numbers , and offences classified by type and location. Complementing these were specialized records including fingerprints and photos. New statutes were put in place creating the post of Secretary General.
The Organization's international radio network was launched in , providing an independent telecommunications system solely for the use of the criminal police authorities at national level.
Today, millions of messages are transmitted annually via a secure, web-based, police communications system, accessible to countries. A democratic process to elect the President and Executive Committee was instituted and the Headquarters moved to Paris, France. The first Red Notice was issued in for a Russian man wanted for murdering a policeman. Effectively an international alert for wanted persons, the Red Notice includes identifying information and a summary of the charges against the person.
