This is a pretty subjective question, so keep that in mind.

I would say a great many historians see a certain progress in history as a discipline. Historical methodology has made great strides in the last 200 years. We have a greater appreciation for how to properly critique sources; history is no longer (in the Western tradition) simply a series of dates related to political events and wars, but rather encompass the poor, women, and racial minorities; history is no longer simply a tool for the state to legitimize itself and its interests, etc.

Historians also have access to a great deal of resources that would have been unimagined. The work of archaeologists can now help give us an idea of how many people were living in a given area at specific periods of time, for example. The advances in DNA tests and carbon dating have rocked previous estimates for the age of numerous civilizations, as well as their genetic ancestry.

Things are a great deal easier for us than they were for historians just a decade or two ago. We can scan documents and review them, at home, at our leisure. We can download books whose copyright has ended, fresh off the internet in a nice PDF.

There are still major problems. One of them is simply defining what history is, what it should and can be used for, etc. Another is that there does not seem to be any sort of unified historiographical theory. There are a great many approaches, but we seem no closer to consensus than in times long passed. In fact one of the really big schools, Marxism, has largely collapsed after the fall of the USSR.

If you were to ask me what the purpose of history was, I would say it is to define where we came from and why things are the way that they are, so as to help individuals and communities understand the true context of the realities they face (as well as aid them in defining their identities), and finally help humanity project where we want to be in the future. History will always be an attractive target for interested parties to manipulate people's view of themselves so as to be better controlled. Governments do this, private interests do this, even revolutionaries do this. The role of the historian, the historian's real responsibility, is to try to give the closest reflection of the past as s/he is capable and to try to remain above petty politics. We are the Watchers on the Wall, the Shield that guards the Memories of Men.