ul. Wspólna 1/3
00-529 Warszawa 53
| |
ul. Wspólna 1/3 00-529 Warszawa 53 |
International Conference
Research for Information Society
Warsaw, 15– 17 October 1998
Since many years Polish researchers and engineers have been active in the field of information and communications technologies (ICTs). The twenty years of independence between 11 November 1918 and 1 September 1939 gave a boost to the Polish industry and telecommunications. The industry was handicapped however by 123 years of the occupation of Polish1 territories and the intentional policy of foreign governments who were not interested in technological and economical development of the occupied country. That applies especially to the Russian sector. The underdevelopment is still clearly visible in the eastern part of today’s Poland. On the other hand the vital Polish spirit and thought were not conquered any time and they could develop freely in a new political situation. As the effect of that the Polish school of mathematics quickly became known world– wide, to mention only Stefan Banach2, Kamil Kuratowski3, Jan Łukasiewicz4, Wacław Sierpiński5, Hugo Steinhaus6, Alfred Tarski7 and Stanisław Ulam8 [8], [9]. Their concepts influenced the fundamental theories of modern mathematics and computational science. More applied research was conducted by Marian Rejewski (1905– 1980), Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski who discovered the method for breaking down German ciphers generated with Enigma machines. They constructed the decryption machine called ‘The Polish Bomb’ which was transferred to the Government Code and Cipher School in Bletchley, U.K. where Alan Turing developed its new versions [2], [3], [10]. The outbreak of the Second World War stopped the development of Polish industry and telecommunications. The scientists, once they have returned from the front, had to work in conspiracy for our underground country.
Once the war was over, in 1948 the Group for Mathematical Apparatus at the Institute of Mathematics in Warsaw was created under the leadership of Henryk Greniewski. That fact marked the commencement of Polish research in IT, which was based on long tradition of theoretical mathematics in Poland. The first achievement of that Group was the construction of the Analyser of Differential Equations (ARR) in 1954. The analogue machine containing some 400 electronic valves was capable of solving of systems up to eight ordinary (also non– linear) differential equations. ARR found its application inter alia in the investigation of non– linear mechanical vibrations. In 1958 the Group for Mathematical Apparatus constructed the first Polish digital computer called XYZ which was a simplified version of IBM 701 with the elementary electronic cells based on solution used in the Soviet BESM 6. It used ultrasonic memory, based on mercury tubes, designed by Romuald Marczyński and Henryk Furman. That solution was later replaced by ultrasonic memory based on nickel wires. The computer was also equipped with a magnetic drum memory. XYZ was able to perform some 800 operations per second. In 1960 a new machine called ZAM 2 has been constructed and it was the first Polish computer to be manufactured in several copies. Possibly one of the greatest achievements was the software used both by XYZ and ZAM 2, in particular the System of Automatic Coding (SAKO) introduced in 1960 and often called ‘The Polish FORTRAN’. At that time it was better than the solutions developed in the Soviet Union [4].
The seventieth were marked by the invention of the notion of ‘infostrada’ by Andrzej Targowski and his proposal of the Country–wide Information System. The project did not take off however. The political changes which started in August 1980 gave Polish people an opportunity for more economic activity, creation of non– profit, professional organisations and the freedom of information. In 1981 the Polish Information Processing Society9 (PIPS) was founded. Unfortunately, the Marshal Law interrupted the democratic changes a few months later and the process was concluded only 8 years later — in 1989. The slow down of changes and the economic crisis was rather discouraging for Polish scientists and many of them emigrated to the Western Europe and to the USA. They have used each possible means of communications to exchange news from their homeland. Computer network was one of them. Since September 1989 University of Buffalo, NY hosted the discussion list on Polish culture (POLAND–L), which has been used to discuss a variety of problems, including political ones10. Polish physicists at CERN started DONOSY11 — a liberal newspaper, a digest of Polish press, which provided Polish expatriates with up– to– date news from their country. The text was delivered from Warsaw to CERN and then freely distributed to the subscribers. In short time DONOSY got their ISSN number.
In the meantime some network initiatives were started by the scientists in Poland. Their needs became quickly recognised by the State Office for Scientific and Technological Development — the Polish ministry of science, which provided funds for the Country– wide Academic Computer Network (KASK) project in 1987. The network grew rapidly and spontaneously. After the first democratic election in Poland all the restrictions in trade of advanced technologies (set by the Co–ordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls — COCOM) have been removed. That resulted in the development of supercomputing centres in Poland. Furthermore there have been no other obstacles in getting connection to the world– wide network. This was achieved in August 1990 when the first official EARN/BITNET node was launched at the Institute of Physics, Warsaw University [7]. Due to those political changes the State Office for Scientific and Technological Development has been restructured and a new ministry — the State Committee for Scientific Research (KBN)12 — was founded. The off– line EARN connection was not sufficient for the academic community and in September 1991 the first node got connected to the Internet [5]. Network started to be an important medium for information exchange encouraging growing Polish democracy. All the political moves and reactions of the West to them have been widely discussed. Official news were confronted to independent data. This was used also for discussing the situation in Russia.
The notion of Information Society appeared in Polish scientific papers at a rather early stage. More advanced studies, however, have been started only recently. Several Universities in Warsaw (the Medical University of Warsaw, the Warsaw School of Economics, the Warsaw University and the Warsaw University of Technology) established an interdisciplinary Institute of Modern Civilisation, which in turn founded the Centre for Information Society (CIS), with educational and research agenda. The Faculty of Radio and Television at the University of Silesia established the Centre for Information Society Studies13. Research on Interdisciplinary Issues of Information Age has also started at the Institute of Telecommunications in Warsaw. Another research initiative, including organising conferences, was started at the Institute for Development and Strategic Studies (IRiSS)14 in Warsaw [6].
In terms of legal regulations related to the Information Society problems it is worthwhile to notice, that the European approach is to minimise the restrictions on digital data exchange and rather to adapt the existing legal acts so as to include new media and technologies. At the same time, the new regulations should be as much technology independent as possible. For those reasons, as well as due to low maturity of some technologies and the new phenomena, the national and international legal systems deal only with a small number of issues related to the information processing and exchange. The nature of the problem causes significant distribution of those issues in differently classified regulations within a variety of different fields which has been shown during the screening phase of the process of Polish preparations for the accession into the European Union. It was also recognised that the Polish legal system is generally consistent with the acquis communautaire of the European Communities. The new Penal Code15 which became effective on 1 September 1998 classifies the following computer– related crimes: unauthorised gain of information by breaking electronic, magnetic or other special protections; use of wire– tapping, visual or other special device in order to gain information; destroying, damaging, erasing or changing of substantial information; disabling or substantial impeding of authorised access to information. Higher penalties are executed if the listed activities include a major financial damage, financial benefits for the actor or misuse of the information related to the state defence, security of communication or performing duties by the state administration. In other words, the new Penal Code takes into account all aspects of the information security recommended by the OECD, i.e.: availability, confidentiality and integrity of information. The effectiveness of the regulations is to be judged in the nearest future on a basis of real court cases. The other important piece of regulation is the personal data protection act16 which became effective on 30 April 1998. It resulted in the appointment of the Chief Personal Data Protection Inspector and introduced an obligatory registration of all files (not only in a digital form) containing personal data. Processing of sensitive data such as political and sexual preferences, religious practices, racial status or health problems is allowed only in special cases. Several related acts have been issued which specify inter alia the criteria which should be met by the devices used for personal data processing. It is not only data, that is secured by the Polish legal system. The act on copyrights and the related rights17 which became effective on 23 May 1994 provides basically the same protection of intellectual property rights in respect to the computer programmes as to the literary works. The protection concerns also the design, programming notes and user manuals. The main criterion here is the novelty of the work and the definition of its form regardless of the technical means. No interference into a computer programme, though, is legally allowed, which differentiates the programme modifications from the elaborations of literary works which, on the contrary, are allowed. Monitoring of the impact and the efficiency of the copyright law in respect to the computer programmes as well as the management of copyright laws is being performed by the Society ‘Polish Software Market’ (PRO)18which was founded in 1992. Other examples of digital works, such as the web pages, are being treated as a typical work of art. In the Polish law so far, there is no special protection of the databases included. The collections of data are subject to the copyright law dependent on their creative character. An amendment to the copyright law is being prepared which should introduce the sui generis protection according to the Directive of the European Council on the legal protection of databases19. Finally, the new regulations of the telecommunications market are being discussed. Two consecutive projects of the new telecommunications law were submitted to the open debate and displayed in the Internet20. The revised version is now being discussed by the government. The law limits the scope of licensed services only to those which require an assignment of scarce resources such as numbering or frequency bandwidth. Only international voice connections in a public telephone network are subject to the monopoly of the Polish Telecom till 31 December 2002. Moreover, the construction of long distance lines and international links as well as the provision of long distance and international services is not allowed for the companies with the majority of foreign capital. Except for those two restrictions, the new law provides full liberalisation of the telecommunications market.
As mentioned above, the first systematic approach to the problem of open communication and new media has been officially taken by the KBN. To co– ordinate growth of the Polish Internet and facilitate its funding the KBN announced its Strategy for the Development of IT for Polish Scientific Community by the end of 1993. At the same time, the Scientific and Academic Computer Network in Poland (NASK)21 has been founded by the KBN as an independent R&D institute responsible for network development and maintenance as well as for introducing new technologies. Shortly after that five High Performance Computing Centres22 were founded by the KBN. After one year of activity NASK got their telecom operator licence from the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications. At the beginning of 1995 the KBN announced its new strategy: IT Infrastructure Development Programme for Polish Scientific Communities23, which covers the period up to the year 2000. The Programme is now being implemented and its main directives are still vital in spite of changing situation in the telecom market with emerging new data network operators and Internet providers, and with plans for telecom market deregulation co–ordinated with the European Union. Up to 1996 NASK has been financed centrally by KBN to provide network services for the entire scientific community and to promote networking. From 1997 on however, KBN changed its maintenance scheme with the goal to distribute funds between the end– users in 1999. At the intermediate stage funds were distributed between the operators of scientific Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs). As a result of that in June 1997 five MANs signed a contract with an independent network operator Tel–Energo for the construction of a high performance wide area network called POL–3424. Altogether, with two wide area networks, the Polish research and academic network consists of 22 MANs25 operating FDDI and ATM at 155 and 622 Mbps and interconnected with links at speeds ranging from 512 kbps to 34 Mbps. There were some 80,000 Polish IP hosts used by 65,000 scientists and 300,000 students from 300 scientific institutions last year [1].
Due to strict financial regulations funds for educational networks cannot be provided by the KBN. Unfortunately, the Ministry of Education have not developed any strategic programme which would enable an Internet access for schools. Major investment in that area has been started in 1995 by the Stefan Batory Foundation (established by George Soros). The action called ‘Internet for Schools’26 in now part of the Foundation for Local Democracy Development. Many other companies and private persons contributed to that project. Currently 1150 schools got connected to 38 physical nodes which host i.a. web servers. Two high schools participated in an EU project ‘Web for Schools in Europe’. Another example of a project for education is the European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL)27 which is being introduced in Poland by the Polish Information Processing Society (PIPS) since 1997. Some 50 driving licences have been issued so far and some 1000 candidates decided to take the exams purchasing their European Computer Skills Cards. Various training companies were appointed to prepare courses compatible with ECDL requirements. The exams however are always conducted by one of 30 certified examiners who are active members of PIPS. The action has been widely promoted in newspapers and magazines. Currently the first popular book on ECDL is being prepared.
The growing popularity of on– line publications pushed most of the newspapers and magazines to create their web pages. That applies also to the major radio 28 and TV29 stations. The Internet boom in Polish media started once the official pages of the Polish Press Agency (PAP)30 were established. Being a valuable source of information that service is widely used by politicians.
Despite the fact that not many politicians recognise the importance of the Information Society, the Internet is exploited by most of the political parties who have their own web pages and on– line information services (newspapers)31. The voice transmissions from the sittings of the Lower Chamber of the Polish Parliament (Sejm)32 are also available on– line. Legal Division of the Polish Scientific Publishers (PWN)33 made the database of Polish legal acts freely available through their Lex Polonica 34 service.
The ministries and other government agencies tend not to use the Internet on a big scale. A separate governmental network PESEL– NET was launched in May 1998. That corporate WAN has been used for some years mainly for the access to the personal identification numbers database (PESEL). This year the modified version of the electronic mail for the public administration (PEAR– 2) was implemented.
The Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling (ICM)35 at Warsaw University in collaboration with the Institute of Meteorology and Water Management (IMGW)36 in Warsaw and the Meteorological Office in the U.K. develops a model for mesoscale weather forecasts37. Local data are being collected and fed in a programme based on so–called ‘Unified Model’ developed in the U.K. The system proved to be very useful during the floods in July 1997.
The on–line railway timetable38 is available due to the collaboration of a software company Info Indeks and the Computer Centre of Technical University in Gdańsk. Unfortunately, its rather user–unfriendly, text based interface, that requires establishing a telnet session, makes it difficult to use and does not bring it popularity. The official service of the Polish State Railways (PKP)39 uses the timetable prepared by the German company HaCon Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH (HAFAS service)40. The flight timetable of LOT Polish Airlines41 is available on their web pages. Since October 1997 they offer on– line ticket reservations42 as well.
One of the best examples of electronic trade is the on–line bookstore of the Prószyński i S–ka publishing house43 which offers some 30,000 different books. The first bank to offer its services via Internet should be the Powszechny Bank Gospodarczy S.A. (PEKAO Group)44 which plans to open its first electronic branch in a few weeks’ time. So far it is possible to fill in the account order form. The first services to be available are: transaction logs, fixed– term investments and bank transfers.
Many local initiatives were started recently by independent, small cable TV operators. They include usually Internet access and home shopping services e.g. in Biskupin — a district of Wrocław and the initiative started by Aster– City Cable TV45 in Warsaw. The first trials of video– on– demand have been performed already.
The information on such initiatives unfortunately is not easily available. One of the information points was established last year at the Institute of Telecommunications as a part of the G– 7 Global Inventory Project46. Financial support has been provided by the KBN. Unfortunately, the visibility of that server is rather low and new initiatives are not registered by their leaders. This is one of the problems which the implementation of the Information Society in Poland faces [6].
As it was stated before, probably in most of the CEECs information used to be one of the most secured resources. To have information meant to have power. In that sense the information was badly misused or distorted. That led in Poland to the growth of two independent information circulations: one of them — official and unreliable and the second — strictly illegal, confidential and limited. At the same time, however, information has never been treated as tradable goods. For that reason the value of information and information market are new concepts in the growing, post– communist democracies. The public offices are still very reluctant in providing any information to the citizens. On the other hand the citizens still feel uncomfortable when providing data to the offices, data which can be used for different purposes that it was meant to originally. Therefore, the society is rather reserved and the barriers in traditional information exchange slow down the developments of the new media. That attitude often results in an ordinary lack of information as there are no data banks or the information is not easily available.
The other serious barrier in the development of the Information Society is the undeveloped telecommunications infrastructure. Poland is the second last country in Europe (ahead of Turkey only) in terms of the density of telephone lines. It should be stated that the number of lines is growing rapidly at the highest rate in Europe. The current situation, however, makes it impossible to provide a universal access to the telecommunications networks and to their content. On the other hand, some sectoral networks are highly developed as it is in the case of the scientific and academic network. To speed up the development of data networks Polish Telecom has also provided a unified telephone number throughout the country which allows to access the Internet at a local phone call rate.
The fast development of the telephone network and the development of the IT infrastructure for the Polish science are, however, the only two major governmental programmes in the field of Information Society. Many smaller sectoral initiatives are not co– ordinated, as there is no national Information Society Strategy. In order to fill this gap a document called ‘The Aims and Directions of the Information Society Development in Poland’ is being prepared by the Ministry of Telecommunications and the KBN. The document should constitute broad guidelines for further, more detailed studies. There are also plans of establishing a governmental Information Society Office which should monitor and co– ordinate the implementation of the ideas described in that document. Further directions and steps should be specified by the consultative body consisting of independent experts from different sectors of the market — the Polish Information Society Forum.
The reluctance of the governmental agencies in founding IT projects is caused by the failure of many huge, centrally financed projects so far. The rate of abandoned projects does not differ from that in the more developed countries, where it reaches as much as 65% of the total figure. Mature economies, however, have started their investment much earlier and at present, at the same rate of failures, have also reached many successful implementations.
The only successful project so far, the infrastructure for science mentioned earlier on, was not free of occasional mistakes either. That applies mainly to the financing scheme. According to the liberalisation guidelines, the burden of financing is being moved from the operators to the end– users (research institutions). That, however, may cause a dramatic decrease of the quality of services, as it was the case after the privatisation of the NSFNet in the United States. It seems that the ‘golden rule of financing high– speed, academic networks’ has not been invented yet. A representative of the KBN discusses those issues with the specialists from other European countries in the European Group for Policy Co– ordination for Academic and Industrial Research Networking (ENPG).
Finally, further developments of research in IT and telecommunications are slowed down by the lack of contacts between the science and the industry. That weak point, known also in the EU Member States, should be cured by the scheme of so– called ‘goal– oriented projects’ co– financed by the KBN. The state budget can participate in up to the 50% of the research costs involved in a particular project. The remaining 50% and the entire cost of the implementation is to be provided by the other party (private or state– owned enterprise). Other initiatives include technology parks created by some universities. To attract the investors, some of them (e.g. in Cracow) are located in Special Economic Zones which offer interesting tax exemptions. The creation of the public– private research consortia should be also stimulated as a side– effect of the association with the Fifth Framework Programme in Research47, Technological Development and Demonstration prepared by the European Commission. The programme, forcing an increased mobility of researchers, can help Polish scientists, who emigrated to the Western Europe, to renew their contacts with Polish research institutions.
As it was shown, the main obstacles of the Information Society development in Poland do not differ much from those in other European countries. The lack of universal network access and basic infrastructure is being rapidly bridged at a speed limited only by the state budget. Polish achievements in the information and communication technologies enable scientists and companies to collaborate and to compete in the global information village.
