Poland has never been associated with an impressive share of science expenditure in the state budget. Even during the period of “propaganda of success,” the authorities admitted that the emigration of scholars was a persistent phenomenon. Technologies that did not meet the needs of developing theory, lack of access to world-class technical innovations, as well as a lack of motivation for young, talented people to continue scientific work, meant that the achievements of Polish science were almost miraculous.
IT acceleration
Between 1991 and 1999, the State Committee for Scientific Research (KBN) declared the allocation of approximately 465 million PLN for the development of IT infrastructure intended for academic centers. Although these funds were not ultimately transferred in full, the Program for the Development of IT Infrastructure for Polish Scientific Communities was created and adopted on March 15, 1995. Since 1991, two wide-area networks had been operating in the country: the Research and Academic Computer Network (NASK) and the POL-34 network, along with 22 metropolitan area networks (MANs) and 5 high-performance computing centers (Warsaw, Krakow, Poznań, Gdańsk, and Wrocław).
The main goals of the scientific IT infrastructure development program were defined in a document officially adopted by the KBN on June 29, 2000. Taking into account future needs—both of the scientific community and the development of national IT in general—the document focused on the development of: computer connectivity for the scientific community, network services, and applications in the field of IT technology in: telecommunications, computational sciences, supporting education with Internet access, remote learning, spatial information systems, environmental resource management systems, telemedicine, and groupware systems.
The article comes from the magazine “e-Fakty” 2/2004.