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Information Technology Association of America disagress with you, as it defines IT (information technology) to be "the study, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems, particularly software applications and computer hardware." (source: http://www.itaa.org/es/docs/Information%20Technology%20Definitions.pdf)

I have to strongly disagree with your doctor-patient analogy as well. I would rather say that a secretary is to IT what a patient is to a doctor. A developer would be in your analogy the people developing the drugs and medical equipment for the doctor.

Exactly right- I can't think of a single more pro-corporation anti-American organization. Corporatism is the new communism- seeking to use the power of the corporate dollar through lobbyists to restrict the free market down to just a few oligarchial players.

The ITAA is for: Replacing all American high-tech workers with H-1b indentured servants, Removing Verifiable voting from American voters, is for guest worker visas to replace American Workers, and is headed by the guy who destroyed Cesar Chaverez's attempt to unionize farm workers back in the 1970s. And we expect a man named GARCIA from this group to be pro-USA enough to head such an important post?

Then it tells us how many new jobs are being created in this field. This is an old trick. I have a cartoon that is a century old of Mr. Block (a recurring character who is basically a rube) travels out west because of newspaper ads about how many jobs are out there and how good they are - he travels thousands of miles and finds out that there are only a few jobs and hundreds of people like him lured in by the ads. Beyond this the job is not as good as promised by the ad - once the bosses have all these suckers competing for a few jobs, they can pay less, increase the hours and have better working conditions. So this sort of nonsense has been going on for a long time.

As other people pointed out, this article does not talk about H1-Bs. IBM is part of the ITAA which is trying to push the H1-B cap up. They spend tons of money in Washington DC and what tchnical professional organizations are spreading money around counetring that? The IEEE? The IEEE gets a great deal of its money from the same corporations funding this, menaing the IEEE is not a real professional organization like the AMA, ABA and so forth. You can read more about how the IEEE is controlled by these companies here.

Does any of this set off bullshit detectors? "Also, a lot of students don't understand the flexibility they can have. You can travel the globe; you have flexibility whether working from an office, from home, full-time, part-time." I am a UNIX sysadmin. I can work from home, part-time? Give me a break, I can do neither. I would love to have a "part-time" UNIX sysadmin job in the sense of only working 40 hours a week. And I can do this for 20 hours a week supposedly? And what's this nonsense about working from home? If I never had to go into the office, I never would. This is a lot of BS, I don't even know why this was posted. Of course, a few of these jobs exist, and we can get away with working from home once in a while, but 99% of jobs be it sysadmins, programmers, DBAs or network admins are at the office and full time, meaning over 40 hours a week.

Another thing is the article does mention "voluntary" attrition being a reason for the lack of people. But of course it never says why people are leaving. They are leaving because they are not getting paid enough to work the hours they do, and having to put up with the BS they have to.

As far as saying there are X many jobs out there, it is really meaningless. Let me create 10 million new jobs right here - I have 10 million openings for C/C++/Java gods, DBAs and sysadmins. The pay is a dollar a week and you have to do a lot of shit. There, I just created 10 million new jobs. If you believe in capitalism and neoclassical economics, and obviously these people do, then supply should always equal demand, if you have X many new jobs that are so great in terms of pay etc., then the market will automatically meet them. This is what is believed from Keynes to Milton Friedman, if you don't believe this you are probably carrying a copy of Marx's Das Kapital. So the idea that there can be a job shortfall is either 1) coming from someone who believes Marx is right and Keynes and Milton Friedman are wrong or 2) someone who is talking out of their ass and just wants people to pay tens of thousands out of their own pocket for an education, so that there will be one more person competing for an IT job, so that the company can then make people work more hours while paying them less money.

The Information Technology Association of America, or the Brain Injury Association of America ??

One must be cautious when they hear the word "labor shortage". Lobbying organizations such as ITAA are paid millions of dollars from large tech companies to lobby congress and the papers about the doom and gloom of tech labor shortages. This is to justify more visa workers and offshoring. In other words, the "cheap labor lobby".

I am not saying that this is necessarily what the article's author has heard, but it would not surprise me. Organizations like ITAA are shrewd and tenacious. They recently managed to influence many small-city newspapers to publish articles about the dangers of tech labor shortages by quoting companies who allegedly will go under unless they import Indians or move to India. Their leader, Harris Miller, lobbied for more agricultural migrants (fruit pickers) from Mexico in his previous job, according to some sources.

The excuse is the same for tech as it was for agriculture: "Americans don't want fruit-picking jobs". At $3-per-hour, who would? They want to do to tech what they did for agriculture. Different career, same plan.

They should be on the same "geek enemy list" as SCO.

During the Internet boom contracting was the only way to go. Bubble's burst. The money is not "crazy" unless your definition of crazy is pretty low. Beware the hidden cost of running a business. Right now getting a perm job is almost impossible. EVERYBODY tells the same story: initially contract then we'll hire. BS! It's the new staffing system. Small number of perm FTE's and then backfill with contractors. And with the number of H1-B visas out there it keeps the contract rate very low. The ITAA says we need more. What a load of crap. The companies can't find enough people they say. Reading between the lines they are saying that companies can't find enough CHEAP people. Thank you Reprobates, er. Republicans.

for the first time in 30 years the IT unemployment rate exceeded the national average unemployment rate

And pro-work-visa lobbyists, such as ITAA, still claim there is a "shortage" of IT people.

http://www.itaa.org/taxfinance/fedexctx.htm

--I see a "press release" like this, it makes me wonder. I'm an old timey government corruption rabble rouser, been a hobby of mine for decades. I will fully admit I am a cynic and a skeptic by default on this sort of thing. Call it busted too much FUD in the past to take these things at face value. The expression is "smell a rat" and over and over and over and over again it always seems to be pointing to the same rat herd... onward, see if I am correct....

So I run a whois on itaa.org, right off the bat I get a personal DINGDINGDING BS BS CHECK FOR FUD AND LINKAGES TO THE SUSPICIOUS RATHERD alert because it's arlington virgina. Now that is just a city in the US, "so what?" sez anyone, well, it's "so what?" to me because so many times in the past I see this area come up, over and over again with various shenaningans with the ratherd, it's because it's retired and now consulting or still active or sheepdipped spook central, that's why "so what?" to me. Them boys got nothing better to do then to get their fingers in every smelly rotten and extremely lucrative pie out there where they can make a black market buck, it's their primary reason for existence now and has been for quite a loooong time. any sort of national security they play act at to keep the sheeps buffaloed. Oh ya, they got a long running congressional and judge blackmail operation going, that's another story for another time.... continue looking... this is fun for me, BTW....

That is my OPINION, and it's not relevant other than it got me to get looking at this....and itaa. I've obviously seen references to them in the past, but now I want to see if there's anything else. Freekin acronym overdose lately...grumble...

So now I go to google...simple query, really a broad cast look-see here,just for grins and giggles, I used itaa, cia as the search string

hmm, these guys sure busy, like back in 2000 when they had a meeting

first paragraph there :

"Former CIA Chief Gates to Headline Global Information Security Summit

September 20, 2000

For More Information Contact:
Tinabeth Burton (703) 284-5305 tburton@itaa.org

Washington, D.C. - Dr. Robert Gates, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1991-1993, and intelligence analyst serving six U.S. Presidents, will address the inaugural Global InfoSec Summit on October 16 in Washington, DC. Gates' keynote speech will address the growing challenge of information security in the global arena. Produced by the Information Technology Association of America and the World Information Technology and Services Alliance, the two-day Summit brings together government and business leaders to forge the type of cross-industry cooperation necessary to build and secure a strong global economy. "

Well, cool, just a buncha good ole boys getting together deciding how they gonna run things and stuff. Funny though, government and corporate cooperation has a name as in a political system of ill repute, but we know not to say it out loud on a forum so as not to invoke goodwin's law.....

anyway, I am juiced now, these folks are interesting... lemme look some more...yes, I know, I should have previously known more about them, mea culpa and so what... I am learning more now..

--ok, s'more, didn't take long, now HERE is an interesting story Also a link there to interesting pdf with more links...

synopsis

Fatcat corporate industry group hires lobbying firm,err, "Independent IT association" whatevers... fatcat group with the cashola contains voting machine companies and defense contractors and "auditors" for electronic voting. They have this meeting,in which were outlined efforts to smooth over voter 'fears" and whatnot. It is allegedly not going to be called lobbying. "Prestigious" IT industry org gets paid nice sum of cash

Take a look here:
http://www.itaa.org/about/members.cfm

Diebold is one of their member companies. This group is just shilling for the e-voting machine manufacturers.

He funded the ITAA : an inside the beltway lobbying firm run by Harris Miller dedicated to paying congressmen to vote for the H1-B program and for out-sourcing. Harris Miller was hired because he was good at getting more migrant farm workers into the country. Now this bastard Gates wants to moan about "jobs"? What a jerk!

Reminds me of an article I found right here at MSN Money, which talks about a new study released by the ITAA that finds that outsourcing will eventually create jobs. The article also talks about how many companies who've outsourced are bringing their work back to the States, such as Dell.

I just feel like pointing out a recent article in Infoworld that suggests that offshoring is good and the related press release of a study by the ITAA.

What is the reaction of your interviewees to this study? Are the data and conclusions sound?

Of the three similar responses, I guess I'll respond to yours. You basically proved my point. We don't each live in our own economic "bubbles". There is no such thing as a one-way outbound flow of dollars because the global economy is so intertwined that prosperity for one major player almost always equates to prosperity for all the major players (this is, of course, only when natural market forces drive the market, unlike the Oil or Diamond cartels). In other words, a rising tide will lift all boats. Generating prosperity in the second most populated country in the world opens up a huge new market for US companies to expand into. This is why history has shown us repeatedly that Outsourcing Jobs creates a net US job increase.

ITAA is the lobbying arm of high tech corporations.

For insight on how ITAA sets up these "blue ribbon panels", read this article about a meeting of electronic voting manufacturers. They brought in Harris Miller, ITAA's president, to see how he could help them.

Highlights from the article:

• ITAA felt the industry should help create its own credebility by setting high standards.
• ITAA suggested "re-engineering" the certification process to make the industry the "gold standard" so they can eliminate "side attacks you are subject to now from people who are not credible as well as people who are somewhat credible
• Harris Miller offers the following comments on how ITAA company partnerships would handle the public debate about electronic voting:
  "Similarly, when we get press calls and the press says 'Joe Academic says your industry's full of crap and doesn't know what it is doing.' What do you say Harris? The reporters always want to know what are the companies saying?.. And there can be two scenarios there: The companies may want to hide behind me, they don't want to say anything... frequently that happens in a trade association, you don't want to talk about the issues as individual companies. ...I take all the heat for them."

How is any of that related to the topic at hand? These panels we see approaching the government are coalitions formed by a lobbying firm that is paid to protect the interests of its clients. The panels are made to look as if they are unbiased experts that are only looking out for the good of all Americans. The truth is they want to control the conversation so it seems as if they are the only ones with relevant information on the subject at hand.

Harris Miller and the ITAA have been doing this for many years, and their MO is always the same. This The National Cyber Security Partnership is nothing more than an extension of ITAA's lobbying efforts.

displacedtechies.com

It would be one thing to share global knowledge about processes in order to lift the entire world's standard of living, but it is quite another to move jobs out of one country, and then fill the remaining jobs with temporary foreign labor.

I think many of us just want a chance to participate in the global market, and Americans are being denied that right even in our own country.

Workers from all countries need to work together, not against each other. That article talked about the obscene hours the people in India had to keep to work with their American counterparts. If this guy is truly following a "follow-the-sun" model, why is that necessary?

It is also interesting to note that Brian Behlendorf not only "stumps" in front of college kids in India, he seems to be a speaker for ITAA.

displacedtechies.com

Anyhow, there's no one solution for each person in my mind. Whether you at your job or some other guy at another job would benefit from collective bargaining (e.g. joining a union) is a decision best made by the individual. Then there's the professional organizations like the Programmers Guild as well. But it's obvious to me that SOME type of professional organization is needed - I mean every other profession, except maybe McDonalds workers, have some type of professional organization, be it a union or more like the AMA/ADA/ABA. And our bosses sure as hell have Chamber of Commerce like guys in Washington DC making sure H1-Bs visa caps rise, or at least are not lowered and things like this. The ITAA is the main association that does this, Microsoft, Intel, IBM and so forth give them millions a year to mostly screw IT workers in Washington DC. Plus they have a PR department that gets news media articles written that said there was a massive shortage of IT workers in the late 1990's and H1-B visas needed to be raised. In fact that's a standard line they are paid to push like tobacco lobbyists who say smoking is not bad for you, these people are still saying there's a shortage or will be soon, they always say that, they're paid to say that.

Finally I should point out that there is a lot of corporate funding for organizations like the IEEE, USENIX (SAGE), ACM and so forth. In some respects it's kind of ridiculous, it would be like having HMO's pay for and to some extent control the AMA. But anyhow, if you're in these organizations it's good to talk to other people and educate and agitate about it, but there has been internal politic problems in the past, and while doing some of that is good, you should also keep in mind that there are avenues and organizations available to you outside of them, like the Programmers Guild and other organizations. And if you don't like any of them, and know others who are dissatisfied, you can always start your own organization, web site, whatever.

The IEEE-USA is a USA specific organization. It was created to give IEEE's U.S. members a voice. Their mission is:

"To recommend policies and implement programs specifically intended to serve and benefit the members, the profession, and the public in the United States in appropriate professional areas of economic, ethical, legislative, social and technology policy concern."

U.S. Software Professionals need their own organizations, their own voice in Congress and elsewhere. Otherwise, groups representing corporations, such as the ITAA will be the only voice. ITAA was instrumental in the great increase in H-1B levels, which was good for Corporations but not for U.S. Information Technology Professionals.

National professional organizations are quite reasonable and rational for professionals. I am certain that Indian, European, and other Techonology Professionals are organized. So should we!

BTW, it is usually best to write your congresspersion, instead of calling. E-Mail can also be effective> One site that can help you get in touch with your legislators is http://www.congress.org. It can help you identify and e-mail your U.S. Federal, State, and Local legislators.

• The 3% Excise Tax on telephone service was enacted in 1898 to fund the Spanish-American War. This was before the U.S. had an income tax, and telephone service was considered a "luxury" item at the time. This tax persists to this day despite repeated efforts to repeal it.
  
• When the U.S. enacted an Income Tax in 1913, politicians explained that it was only targetted at the "richest few" and was only "several percent." The personal deduction, in current dollars, was about $40,000. The first raises in the rates were justified to pay off World War I debt, but the rates persisted, and increased, long past any debt payoff. Today, nearly everyone, all the way down to the working poor, pays a substantial chunk of their income as taxes.
  
• In response to a need to ration rubber during World War II, or to maintain local roadways, many communities enacted a Wheel Tax on automobiles. These taxes have persisted long past the end of World War II, and are often siphoned off of any road maintenance budgets in order to meet shortfalls in general revenue. These taxes are not going away anytime soon, and are rapidly increasing in the face of recent budget shortfalls.
  

Harris Miller, by the way, the head of the ITAA. This is a
front organization for Bill Gates in Washington.
Harris Miller is not a tech expert, but an
immigration lawyer. He made his career lobbying
for importing more itinerant laborers to pick
crops. Impressed with his skills, the richest
people in America hired him to lobby for more H1-B
visas. Unfortuneately for American workers, he
suceeded. Norm Matloff has some information on Harris Miller here.
more information here.

Note: a guy that looks a lot like Miller
drives a Big Mercedes with Virginia vanity licence tags saying "ITAA".
He goes 95 MPH when everybody else is going 70-75 and runs people off the road.

Seriously, I feel bad. Imma gonna go write "I will not confuse four-letter acronyms" on the chalkboard one thousand times. I bet if Slashdot outsourced its comment writing to India, these types of horrible errors would never happen again.

• executives trying to decide whether or not to save money by outsourcing workload overseas
• Legislators looking to justify the continued availability of H-1B visas
• College students trying to decide on a career path

• executives trying to decide whether or not to save money by outsourcing workload overseas
• Legislators looking to justify the continued availability of H-1B visas
• College students trying to decide on a career path

Media companies are very very large, and, as a result, have an enormous financial intrest in Washington.

They aren't nearly as large as the hardware manufacturers and the telecom and ISP industries (which stand to lose BIG TIME if the Internet and PCs are neutered). The ITAA is on our side on this issue - and they represent FAR more money than the RIAA and MPAA combined.

These are the same people who said that 450,000 jobs went >unfilled last year because there were not enough qualified technical people. Let's get some truth on the scene here (previously linked from slashdot here, here, and here). The ITAA is an industry spokes-puppet which is trying to spread a misconception that there is no jobs shortage, and that there is no unemployment, so that the industry can beg Congress for more slave labor force called H-1B. And I'm not referring to merely having more people than there are jobs. The real danger of the H-1B program the ITAA is constantly promoting is the fact that employees under this program:

• are forced to work longer hours
• are forced to work unusual conditions
• are treated badly and with disrespect
• cannot complain for fear of being deported
• cannot change jobs for better conditions or higher pay

That last one is especially sinister because it means that the usual market forces, supply and demand, and competition for skills, is NOT allowed to function for H-1B workers, giving employers a windfall of what is essentially cheap slave labor. They are hired into jobs the employers claim require extended skills, and paid only the average programmer salary (not the near double amounts such skills would normally draw) because the H-1B law only requires the average to be paid based on all programmers (not specifically those with the required skills).

In other words, what the ITAA is spouting is a bunch of crock.

Spending money is one thing. Attacking
American tech workers is another. Microsoft
is the major funder of a large lobbying firm
inside the Beltway called the ITAA. This organization is run by Harris Miller. Harris Miller had previously made his career by lobbying for more migrant labor from Mexico so that rich farmers could pay less for work. It worked. Impressed by this,
Bill Gates hired him to bring in more migrant computer programmers. Miller succeeded: that's right, several special expansions the guest worker H1-B program. Instead of sponsoring a reasonable number of new Americans for citizenship track; large American companies could now import guest workers to replace American progammers. These guest workers do not have "green-card" rights; just guest worker "indentured servitude" status.
So, yes, it's news. Bill Gates throws millions around to get special favors. It's time we held him responsible for his callousness.

The Associated Press reports that "U.S. companies and other groups applied for 342,035 H-1B work visas in 2001, up 14 percent from 2000, before the economy tumbled.", "The number accepted also rose by 40 percent..." and "About half ... are for computer related jobs." The article cites research by UC Davis Professor Norman Matloff saying that "wages of computer programmers and engineers working in the U.S. on the visas are 15 percent to 33 percent lower than those of U.S. citizens".

Mark Shevitz of VisaNow is quoted as saying, "I think it surprised everyone. All that you hear about in the media is these huge layoffs and the tech industry is just shedding workers."

Finally, the article reports "Bay Area companies Oracle, Cisco Systems, Intel and Sun Microsystems were among the top users of the program in 2000, as were universities such as Harvard and Yale. The INS did not have numbers available on how many applications the companies filed last year amid layoffs.

----

BTW: It is illegal to use the H-1B program to lower wages from the rates prevailing in the absence of the program.

Here's information posted by an anti-H-!B activist at another site:

Additional information provided by an h1b activist (although I encourage people to avoid political action, there are far more effective things they can do with technology to deconstruct the edifice that did this to us because it is, after all, in existence because of technologists -- the real ones, not the Wired magazine ones):

80% of the US public opposed H1-B expansion. Part of what makes the bill increasing H1-B Visas so unusual is that it was so unpopular and was passed with very, very little debate.

Zazona is the most comprehensive site on the H1-B issue. Corrective legislation is now in a US congressional Committee. The philosophy of HR 3222 has been supported by a diverse group that includes Buchanan Supporters, Nader Supporters, and the National Urban League. HR 3222 is a compromise-it roles the level of new H1-B Visas back to 1998 levels and puts in place an unemployment adjustment mechanism.

H1-B Visa expansion was advocated by the ITAA. Organized opposition to H1-B includes:the AEA and the Programmers Guild.

You can Look at H1-B applications by company,state,city. You can write your Congressional representatives if you have a problem with the current H1-B situation. You can also write your state representatives. The only aspect of the H1-B issue that is in state jurisdiction is use of H1-B labor at state institutions. However, state representatives are influential in their parties-if your state representative writes a letter to congress it could mean a lot.

I dono, he still looks like a moron

Microsoft is behind the efforts to eliminate the cap on guest workers for high tech. It's a little ironic that Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, doesn't want to pay good salaries to Americans or retrain older workers. He's the man behind several Washington "think tanks" dedicated to attacking American workers, including the the ITAA (this site seems to be down this weekend, time to reboot the NT box). You can check out Microsoft political contributions to political candidates at http://www.traycom/fecinfo. Check out this link to see if Microsoft has bought your Congressman.

I wonder if Microsoft doesn't subsidize them.
I know that Microsoft runs another cover group in Washington called the ITAA, the Information Technolygy Association of America the people who lead the lobbying to increase the number of foreign high-tech guest workers. The ITAA produced some pretty shoddy research so it's not surprising that that the wealthiest man in the world could buy someone else off in Washington to support their agenda.