Digital succession: How to save Polish IT architecture from the "silver tsunami"?

Digital succession is not just about recording the knowledge of departing experts in successive documents. It is a process of building a permanent, sovereign "brain of the organization" (SAVANT-AI) that understands this knowledge and can use it on a daily basis – and a digital workshop (Genesis-BizStory in GENESIS-AI) that systematically acquires, structures, and converts this knowledge into working applications.

Poland's computerization experienced its golden age in 2007–2013. Thanks to unprecedented support from European Union funds (mainly under the Innovative Economy Operational Program), the foundations of a modern state infrastructure were laid at that time. It was then that gigantic projects were implemented, revolutionizing the relationship between citizens, businesses, and government agencies. The most important implementations of that period include:

• Comprehensive Computerization of the Customs Service (e-Customs program): implementation of systems such as Celina, NCTS, and e-Export, which completely automated trade with third countries.

• Construction of the ePUAP Platform: aimed at creating a single window for public administration services.

• Modernization of state registers: including work on the PESEL2 system and projects related to the Digital Map of the Country.

• Systems supporting the Social Insurance Institution (ZUS) and the National Health Fund (NFZ): powerful databases that still form the backbone of the Polish insurance and healthcare system.

The generation of engineers, analysts, and architects who designed these multi-layered architectures are now on the verge of retirement. This phenomenon, known as the "silver tsunami," poses a critical strategic risk: along with the experts from the organization, unique, often unwritten knowledge about processes, relationships between modules, and the specifics of legacy systems is leaving.

The only effective way to stem this drain of expertise is to build a sovereign knowledge resource that will take over the know-how from departing specialists and make it available in a form that is useful for operations and management. The solution to this problem is SAVANT-AI – a sovereign Enterprise Cognitive System that acts as the "brain of the institution," operating locally within the organization's infrastructure. Instead of yet another document repository, SAVANT-AI creates a secure, isolated layer of intelligence above existing systems, gathering complete knowledge about business processes and the IT systems that support them.

The key link in this ecosystem is the Genesis-BizStory platform. Although its original purpose was to collect requirements for new applications in the GENESIS-AI environment – delivered in natural language – its potential in the area of legacy systems is revolutionary. BizStory allows knowledge to be extracted directly from employees and transformed into an organized digital resource that can be both "fuel" for SAVANT-AI and input material for the automatic generation of new applications that replace or wrap legacy systems through the GENESIS-AI platform.

Importantly, the data collected in Genesis-BizStory constitutes a unique input of the highest substantive value – it is a direct record of the experience of experts and the real processes of the organization. This resource is used to retrain the models used in SAVANT-AI, thanks to which the algorithms cease to be merely general language models and become specialized experts who perfectly understand the specifics of a given institution. At the same time, the same structured requirements can be used by GENESIS-AI to autonomously generate new production applications that gradually replace or complement legacy systems, closing the digital succession chain: from knowledge, through decisions, to working software.

Such "informing" of models allows Savant AI to accurately answer questions about niche aspects of legacy systems and proactively support decision-making processes based on the company's historical experience.

The synergy between Savant AI and Genesis BizStory guarantees companies their own sovereign knowledge. Thanks to this, even in the event of generational change and the retirement of key employees, their experience remains within the organization as a permanent, intelligent, and constantly evolving digital capital.

Who is this digital succession model for?

• For ministries, central offices, and institutions that built large systems co-financed by the Innovative Economy Operational Program (POIG) between 2007 and 2013 and are now facing the departure of key architects and analysts.

• For state-owned companies, critical infrastructure operators, and the financial sector, which cannot transfer data and processes to the public cloud, but at the same time need to accelerate their digital transformation.

• For large industrial and logistics organizations that struggle with the "physics of data" – dispersed ERP, MES, WMS, or CMMS systems and the lack of a single, consistent source of truth about processes.

In practice, this means that SAVANT-AI becomes the sovereign brain of the organization, Genesis-BizStory its digital memory, and GENESIS-AI the workshop that builds new applications on that memory.