ICT infrastructure for development

– If we look at the pace of development, implementation and acceptance of the latest technologies in European countries, in Poland we are lagging on average by about 0.4%. per year – said Andrzej Dulka, president of the Polish Chamber of Information Technology and Telecommunications (PIIiT) during the discussion at the European Economic Congress in Katowice.

The world is developing faster than we are chasing – he noted and pointed out that Poland had not taken advantage of certain opportunities.

– We have not introduced 5G so far. We have not introduced basic legal acts that normalize and stabilize life in Poland, such as the UKSC (Act on the national cybersecurity system – ed.) or the act on electronic communications. Failure to implement each of these acts means that we will not catch up with the rest, and no one will wait for us – emphasized the president of PIIiT.

Ignacy Święcicki, head of the digital economy team at the Polish Economic Institute, warned against “fetishizing” EU indicators and rankings in the field of innovation and digitalization. As he emphasized, Poland must develop a new digitalization strategy, which will refer not only to EU goals and indicators.

– We must have our own goals and diagnose our own situation in the area of ​​infrastructure – he pointed out.

He also drew attention to the ambitious goals of the European Union in the field of business digitization, which are not necessarily compatible with the structure of Polish business. This includes: the goal of using cloud computing and artificial intelligence by 75%. companies in the EU. Currently, 3.7% of people in Poland use AI. companies.

– Of course, this is very little and we need to make a joint effort on the public and private sides to increase these indicators, but let's measure it in terms of the structure of companies in Poland and what they need – noted Ignacy Święcicki.

Emil Andryszczyk, director of the production digitization office in Orlen, presented the company's perspective on the role of ICT infrastructure and good data management. As he indicated, he himself perceives data on three levels. The first one is operational, i.e. the level of data collected from the installations and those that their operator has. The second is the management level, which aggregates data from many installations from different companies, and the third layer is the strategic level at which key people in the company operate.

Emil Andryszczak focused on the first two data-related layers.

– The operational level is actually the most important level, which transmits data from the installation 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There are no gaps here, so there is a lot of data. To illustrate – looking only at the refinery and petrochemical plants in Płock, it is 200,000. measurement points that transmit data on temperature, pressure, valve settings, and quality parameters. This is the scale that means there is a lot of data, and at the same time, based on it, the operator must make decisions in close to real time – he explained.

He added that the operational level is also important because if the data is not of appropriate quality, it multiplies problems at higher levels.

– The management level means – again – an increase in scale, because now we are talking not only about a single installation, but also about a refinery, petrochemical plant, chemical plants, i.e. the plant in Płock, the Gdańsk Refinery, Anwil, Unipetrol and Orlen Lietuva. And at this level we have many isolated solutions, often the best in their area, but the challenge is to integrate and build a common approach to data management, explained Emil Andryszczak.

Therefore, he added, the production digitization office in Orlen proposed a solution: the Data and Knowledge Management Platform.

– It is a platform that responds to integration needs, but also one on which we will build one data model, one rules for validation, data management and data unification. This is also a platform that will later be responsible for making data available to other systems, i.e. it will play the role of a data platform, but it will also be an integrator – said the head of the production digitization office in Orlen.

Radosław Nielek, director at NASK, spoke about the safety of using ICT infrastructure and data security during the debate. As he emphasized, entrepreneurs and people should be able to use solutions that are generally safe.

– We cannot burden them with building safe solutions because a small entrepreneur employing a few or a dozen people has no resources, no competences, no technology and should not focus on this – he explained.

He added that we need to start thinking in terms of “security as a service”.

– We will pay not for access, not for connection and not for the ability to transmit data, but for the security associated with it – he predicted.