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D.C. Awards Obamacare IT Work To Offshore Outsourcer
dcblogs writes "Infosys, an India-based offshore IT outsourcing firm, recently announced that it had won a $49.5 million contract to develop a health benefit exchange for the District of Columbia. The contract was awarded to a U.S.-based Infosys subsidiary, Infosys Public Services. That's one of the larger government contracts won by an offshore outsourcing firm, but it's unclear whether any of the work will be done overseas. The District isn't disclosing any contract details. An FOIA request for the contract has been submitted. Infosys is one of the largest users of H-1B visas, and has been under a grand jury investigation for its use of B1 visitor visas."
for why the H-1B system ought to be massively reduced and US contracts should be awarded only to actual US companies instead of shell-game "subsidiaries."
Why is this type of work not being done by an American company with American workers? This must be how Obama said we would "save money" on healthcare. By offshoring jobs critical to the program.
With everything that's been going on recently, can Obama do anything worse? We're finding out day after day that this guy is a colossal screw up.
These kinds of contracts are supposed to be bid out to the lowest bidder.
If that actually happens: people complain that a company like Infosys wins the contract.
If it doesn't happen: people complain that the government is overpaying for IT services, and back up their allegations by quoting a much lower price someone in the private sector got (...from Infosys) as evidence that the government is inefficient.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
This is too bad. I very much want to see the new healthcare plan succeed. Now the conservatives are going to say "See? See? Told you it doesn't work! No one deserves reasonably priced healthcare. Let The Free Market sort it out."
And to be clear, it wouldn't have been much different if the contract were awarded to IBM, Accenture, etc. The problem is the level of abstraction that an outsourcer adds to the project. Having the coders offshore just makes it worse.
I've been on a couple of Infosys projects in the past (both as a third party contractor and an FTE) and for the most part, they're just like any other outsourcer -- super-expensive, taking forever to do anything, etc. Code quality was garbage, just like any other firm . Indian or not, that's the root of the problem. Everything can be done cheaper in-house, but the accounting tricks employed by business make it expensive to have FTEs.
Obamacare + foreign workers = WIN! (for you click-whoring editors)
By this logic, probably every government IT project has some element of either outsourced labor or parts manufactured overseas. Right now, I'm trying to find an article that I can reduce to a headline with big tits, gun rights, and failed Bush foreign policy in it...
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
It would be great if immigration policy could be decided based on something other than the interests of suppressing wages and controlling the workforce.
Agribusiness loves cheap labor from Mexico. Keep 'em coming, but keep that deportation threat over their heads so they don't get uppity about those "wages" and "working conditions" things.
Then the wealthiest companies America need tech workers and don't want to pay American wages. Since they can't pile in illegals to run the data centers, get those h1bs rammed through congress. There we go, cheap tech workers who are nice and easy to control because they don't want to get deported after two weeks if they lose their job.
Feudalism. Fascism. Whatever, it's a racket.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
You forgot the water fluoridation and vaccination conspiracies, Comrade.
Why is this type of work not being done by an American company with American workers?
Because American companies are incompetent and expensive.
How are they incompetent?
See, why pay through the nose for an American company who's just going to basically go offshore and use the premium they charge for paying their CEO and salespeople too much money (see IBM, Oracle, HP, etc...) when you can cut out the middleman and go directly to the source?
So corporate America who won't hire us Americans because we are not "qualified" or whatever your BS excuse is - payback is a bitch!
Ahahahahahahhahahaah!
Everyone, except for small companies, is using H-1b programmers. InfoSys, Tata, and the like have discovered that an American front company can get them past the "we want to support American companies" view of business so they started buying up their American competitors.
Since we can't get away from foreign programmers, then we need to ensure that the job they do is good. What the D.C. and the U.S. really need are decent lawyers who won't let something like this become a honeypot that any vendor can raid as they see fit. If InfoSys makes a bid, they should have to live up to it.
The people in power have been outsourcing everything possible to off shore work, against the law in many cases (several pieces of DOD work have been outsourced to South American countries). The only thing they are trying to keep local are the people needed to implement a police state when desired.
You only need to look at what they are doing and compare that to the state of our economy to figure out that they want the country to collapse. They are trying as hard as they can to make it collapse without being obviously criminal.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
You want American corporations such as Google and Apple to get these so that they can later dodge the income taxes rather than giving the contracts out to foreign companies who contribute nothing to the American tax coffers.
US companies do business in India? Wait.. To get in there you have to fight to pass innumerable hurdles thrown in your way.
How about China?
If the world was a level playing field, I'd probably be ok with the H1 Visa scam bullshit. But I'm not (and I'm a Brit in the UK). Globalisation is fine, I have no problem with it in its bassic capitalist basis. But it has to cut both ways. If China and India get to grow their middle class by working on US workload, then US companies should have the same access to do the same in China and India.
I watch real time each week. Its somewhat weird seeing the slagging off the republicans get there. The dems in the US seem very very friendly to immigration, and to globalisation, and seem to take a lot of funding from the Apple and 'Media' funding. In the meantime on an observational level, seems to me the bone marrow of America - the middle class person is under seige. I can't fundamentally understand off shoring, from a business perspective. Even in raw capitalists terms - eroding the middle class is eroding away your own customer base long term.
Globalisation in the west now seems to be 'worry about the H1 visa holders', and immigrants, and 3rd world - more than your own people. Screw them. Very strange way to proceed.
Its ok to have a concern about minorities and immigrants, but its got strangely out of kilter.
We`re all equal
they are also preparing....the bigfoot attacks
spagetti code that does not work is what they just purchased.
companies are trying to reduce their labor costs and have enough money to lobby the government. They don't care about the citizens of any of these countries, it is a means to an end.
This government and administration is the most corrupt, unpatriotic bunch of criminals to ever curse this country. This is even more proof they do not care about America and Americans, only what is cheaper to pass their projects. They will slowly start outsourcing everything while there are competent American firms who could do this even better. When will people wake up and storm the gates?
I also loved the the Martin Luther King statue was done in China
I know Booz Hamilton has at least one opening.
What I mentioned is not a private company, this is the US Government shitting on US Citizens. The difference is huge!
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Interesting the massive push from the government to allow more H1-B visas the last few months.......
where you had sick people being drooped / hit with bills with 400%-500%+ markup and other bs like they coded it the wrong way so we will not pay.
health care places that take your money for years and when you get really sick they look back and say you had a zit 20years ago so it's a pre existing condition and you are not covered.
mini med planes that don't cover jack shit it you do get sick.
When you switch jobs you have to change health plans.
The obamacare is not the best idea but it's a good starting point and it does fix some issues and shits other stuff around. As for the 29 hour rule places have been doing stuff like that for years. But is it the best way to fix that? Maybe it should have a higher bar or at least be setup to go after the walmarts that just about dump there works on to medicaid.
I would estimate that between 50-200 people would be actively involved in this project, and probably shouldn't be thought of as "Large", or even "Larger". Furthur, any US government contract 100 million, in my experience, would never be classified as "Large". This is simply anti-political sensationalism.
part of the issue is HR and the schools / training.
When you have HR doing stuff some time it's not even that they are looking for a H1-B it's just that they don't know about IT when setting the job posting.
Like listing each skills that IT may use or even stuff that they only touch 1-2 times a year or maybe even 1-2 times in 3-5 years and say we want people with 5 exp, saying that we want EXP with tool X and passing over people with tool Y that is just about the same thing or even when tool X is easy to pickup.
Thinking that CS = IT when it does not.
Passing over the tech / trades schools / even in house training that have much less skill gaps then what a CS school gives people.
Passing over people who do it contracting even when lot's of IT work is contracting or thought staffing firms.
Some even it's when PHB are running IT and don't know about IT so they look for key words / say I want X done in Z time and when real IT people say that can't be done they go to H1-B firm that says we can do that even when it ends up going over Z time.
First, most government-funded constructions projects include a requirement that prevailing wages be paid for work on the project. Second, the lowest bid on any project does not always win; it is often based on significant differences in the way the project would be delivered.
A lot of people complain about a lot of things including overpaying for IT systems, bridges, roads, police, fire departments, etc. Just becuase people complain about high prices does not mean that the prices are actually high.
Yesterday before bed I thought, gee our worthless goverment heads just can't have much more stupid ideas to screw their IT workers. After all there's lots of high-tech US workers needing jobs. So.. get up, fire up the Winshit puter and.... Obumacare farms out IT work offshore... WTF !!
Is Obamacare the official name for this healthcare reform package? Somehow I don't think it is. It's not very good legislation. It's definitely not healthcare done right. But using the term "Obamacare" still seems to smack of bias, especially when you consider that main details of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act are implementations of the Heritage Foundation's plan that the Republicans were pushing back when the US was trying to get meaningful healthcare reform. US politics seems to be driven by short memories and nasty, hypocritical backstabbing.
If it is so small, then it would not cost much more to do it domestically. This is a disgrace.
And the scary part of this? That he is more liberal than the mainstream opposition.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Hardly "disgraceful", but yes, it would be considerably more expensive, from a labor perspective, for an American contractor to fulfill the contract. India's per capita GDP: $1510 VS United States per capita GDP: $48100 so at a ration of 31:1, the contract might cost more than 1.5 billion. Personally, I'm glad they are looking for cost cutting measure where they can. (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=GDP%2C+United+States%2C+India)
Agreed. This is disgraceful. DC should be widely called out on this in the media.
Sadly, Americans are quite ignorant and need to read INFORMATIVE things like this.
BTW, D.C. is heavily managed by the US HOUSE which is part of the reason it is a mess, it's an odd situation, not like a state or the fed.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
In Indian culture, Cheating was called 'competition' and 'inevitable.' Plagiarism was a 'cultural practice' and a 'perceptual construct' that required sensitivity.
A problem to stop decaying of ethics in America is to require H1Bs and F1/J1 visa students to enroll in re-education military camps for one year before they are allowed to be employed or go to school.
All of the work will be done overseas. The reason is very simple: the government has joined big business in making sure white people stay unemployed.
Face the truth.
The government don't give a shit to its own citizens.
Want to see all those dark skin Asian ni66ers vs the sub-Saharan types tn these re-education camps, who get a better ass rape?
love your logic bomb, by using the same logic.
A US programmer roughly equals 45 times an indian programmers quality and there for in the end this contract in India will end up costing 2.2B in actual dollars to the US tax payers.
We've already past the event horizon of technology+over population to the point that there will never be enough jobs for the population. Automation has become a cheap, viable, alternative to hiring people for pennies and paying enormous shipping costs. Instead of worrying about who is taking "our" jobs, we should be worrying about how we will be taking care of the population when there are "no jobs for anyone". It will be a very real problem in the coming generations. I don't really mean this in a negative light. It will people to spend more time with their families, learning, exploring. But food and items will need to be properly rationed out to everyone.
Erosion of family structure and morals.
Why do you care about this one? The other ones seem to make sense.
They know the spec game inside out, right side left and top side down. They will implement a totally useless piece of software and when you complain they will insist they have implemented exactly what was in the original contract. That archaic grammar book by Wren and Martin is God's gift to them. They will endlessly argue what is meant by "shall" and "may" and "will". Most high school teachers in India still swear by this book as the ultimate authority in English grammar. So you will be forced to amend and correct the original specs. That will trigger all sorts of revised estimates and revised costs, and by the time you are done, you would have spent about 50% more than your highest bidder, taken twice as long, and gotten yourself software that does 50% of what you want, and probably 75% of what you wrote in the spec sheet but 100% of exactly what is in the spec sheet according to Messrs Wren and Martin as interpreted by Infosys.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Here's a thought, suspend the H-1B visas and educate or retrain US citizens to take those jobs. Corporate America keeps exclaiming that the H-1B visa process is expensive and the only reason they go that route is that they can't find qualified US applicants. Well, use those funds to train your own employees. Then, when the US is at full employment (at whatever that rate really is), if more workers are needed, then bring them in.
A large percentage of college graduates are not gainfully employed in the fields they studied, including STEM. It is hard to argue, that we need to import more STEM workers when we can't even employ the recent graduates. But maybe it has to do with that new math, you know the kind where you can build wealth in America by creating jobs overseas and importing workers for the rest of the jobs here.
What was that called by Reagan? Trickle down economics, where the majority of the population trickles further down the system so the few at the top can accumulate the wealth. If it costs corporations too much to hire trained labor, then either train them yourself (as in the past), cut dividends and executive pay, or find a different line of work. After all, isn't that how economics is supposed to work?
If they have the contract to an American firm, they'd take the initial payment and invest it in lobbying for why they need more money because they didn't understand the scale of the project when they started. They would be late, messy and never get done doing it. Then after being 5 years late, they'll go to court and only the lawyers will end up the better for it.
The Indian company on the other hand will simply develop an unusable product which will represent a product which is a literal interpretation of the original contract but will be a disaster since they'll always choose the wrong meaning of any word which could have to meanings.
Either way, the project will be a wreck because American companies suck at delivering software to the government and Indian companies never actually understand what they're supposed to make... They do make great things... Just not what they were supposed to. Haha
google, yahoo, microsoft ,facebook,oracle all sell in india /china/ and all other places where they can, cause they are good at building products..
india seems to be good at providing software services and delivering projects at cheaper rate . . so i guess we can't complain sitting here in america... about not allowing indian company to bid for projects...that will be against free trade..
1. The product will be delivered in a working state
2. The product will cost $50 million at most
3. The product will be delivered on time
Pick any 1 (as in between 0 and 2, excluded) of the above.
Obama is the most conservative president the US has had in the past 30 years, and possibly in all of time. This is exactly in line with everything else he has done to produce more money for the wealthiest Americans while under the conservative guise of "it's good for everyone else too". He has consistently chosen the kinds of fiscally conservative actions that Bush Jr, Bush Sr, Reagan, and Nixon all could only dream about.
It is not completely clear from the headline, but the summary and article would make me guess that this contract was issued by the District of Columbia government not the Obama administration.
I saw, "D.C. Awards Obamacare IT Work To Offshore Outsourcer" and immediately thought, IBM?
100% Insightful
45 times? Where did you get this BASELESS figure from? I work with plenty of Indians here in my US Govt contract, who are getting paid American wages, and do top notch work. So take your pick, Indian Developers in America can do the job at American wages, OR Indian developers in India can do the Job, and Indian wages. here's some advice for you: 1) Ignore Inflammatory Sensationalism 2) Accept the fact that the United States government MUST find ways to do more with less, thanks to the sequester. 3) It IS cheaper, MUCH cheaper, to outsource work to a place where wages are cheaper. Again, I'm happy to see DC being smart about the money they spend.
Are you kidding? The Media is making WAY more than 49.5 million airing all the garbage about the Zimmerman trial.
Originally, the so-called "Affordable Care Act" (Most legislation by politicians of both parties gets mis-named to mislead low-information voters who will never read the actual bill) was labelled "ObamaCare" by its opponents (just as the earlier attempt under Bill Clinton, where he had his wife champion the cause got labelled "HillaryCare"). Democrats hated this because they wanted every one to use the name they'd given the bill and to assume it would produce "affordable care"... but it just does not work that way in American politics (in the 1980's, Democrats who hated missile defense labelled Reagan's "Strategic Defense Initiative" as "Star Wars" to paint it as violent and science fiction/fantasy and THAT moniker stuck)
Obama himself, however, has publicly embraced the moniker "ObamaCare" and has said he is proud of the name; He, no doubt, thinks it will all be good "in the end" and that future generations will identify it with him as his legacy. Given that Obama has embraced the moniker, it's valid for people on either side to use it and not automatically be presumed to be starting a flame war.
I think every Medically Uninsured, and or Gay person could debate your thesis on point. On top of that, the president did what his comic predecessor couldn't do; harm a Bin Laden Kin Folk. I guess when you're involved with the Oil Industry, murdering people is a trivial event?
wages are going down, prices are going up. Sure, _toys_ are cheaper. But housing, food and medicine all cost a _lot_ more. You're lunch is more like $6 or $7 now, even at McDonalds, and you're probably making $9/$9.50.
Also, I'd be interested in _which_ logical fallacy you'd like to site disproves the broad statistical evidence of declining wages and what debate techniques you would use to show prices are going down.
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or did Ranton spend the first half of his post saying everything was A-OK because we have the same quality of life as we did in 1960, then finish by saying how much better things are 50 years later (1960 + 53 = 2013)?
Seriously, is anyone buying this? What the hell happened to _progress_? I know slippery slope is a 'logical fallacy' and all that rot, but 'come on. If you think the rich are content with rolling us back just to the 60's in wealth inequality you're nuts.
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people who just plain don't like being told what to do, even when it's the _right_ thing.
Also, the iPad fallacy is just that, a fallacy. Those people aren't worse off because they don't have an iPad. They're worse off because 76% of them are living Paycheck to Paycheck. The highest percentage since the 1940s!
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The jobs aren't going because of need. They're going because people in those countries lack an EPA, access to medical care, a social safety net, low cost education, etc, etc. They're going there because the super rich in those countries, e.g. the real 1%, have made those people's lives hell for their own profit.
I can't complete with some who drinks dirty water, dies of cancer at 45, and if his house catches fire he burns to death before he can open a window. I suppose if I want to tank my quality of life I could. But why in God's good name would I do that for some misguide notion of "Libertarianism"? Christ, if you want to do that go off to Galt's Gulch already. We don't need or want you here.
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it was largely an accident. Following WWII large parts of the world were destroyed and in need of rebuilding. Also, Eisenhower recognized that without a large scale gov't effort we'd slip back into the policies of wealth inequality that lead to so much unnecessary suffering, so he kicked off the Military Industrial complex (or as I like to call it, Weaponized Keynesianism). Finally the cold war scared companies and prevented the global race to the bottom that Karl Marx predicted (but all you can remember about him is that Mao/Stalin used his books for their dictatorships).
The cheap imports won't last. Already the price of almonds is skyrocketing because they're being exported. You will compete and lose on the global marketplace.
Also, what in God's good name makes you think most Americans own stock? Half of them are below the freakin' poverty line, which we haven't changed since the 50s'.
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in 'free' market capitalism like you're probably in favor of Trusts develop that control all capital. Cyclic down turns like what happen in 2008 wipe out the wealth of all but the well connected (capitalism is for the poor, while socialism for the rich).
You're dreaming of an idealized capitalism you were taught in grade school that never has, and never will exist. It just doesn't happen. You will never keep people from using their privilege to your detriment. The only solution is for us all to band together to regulate that privilege. That's called Government.
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This means the work will be certain to suck. I have yet to see an Indian firm that didn't suck. They always make a lot of noise about how smart they are but the work they produce never follows requirements and has to be rewritten by domestic American-born resources. This just means that DC's project will fail
Now they will have to deal with subpar indian code.
It is a well known fact that by the virtue of being born in America, our software developers are the best in the world, regardless of what community college they graduated from or what experience do they have.
Why not contract the NSA and cut out the middle man?
Obama himself, however, has publicly embraced the moniker "ObamaCare" and has said he is proud of the name;
I suppose, if that's the case, it's fair. One would wonder why he would want his name attached to it though. That just makes it more of a target. It's already pretty clear that it's going to be dismantled on partisan grounds as soon as there's a shift in power. It's also a bit of an abomination anyway.
Awesome. I can't believe that people bother with services like LifeLock when our own government uses our money to hand our most personal information to foreigners...
If India's population was 300 million instead of over a billion, then maybe everyone could have a rice bowl every day. I hope you see what I'm getting at.
Americans should be concerned about the creeping Caste system in USA due to H1B/Immigrants from India.
http://dsnuk.org/2013/04/25/the-uk-parliament-outlaws-caste-based-discrimination/
Caste system is worse than terrorism. It's a hidden apartheid and a slow poison that will destroy your economy.
Google "Companies ruined or almost ruined by Indias".
Adaptec - Indian CEO Subramanian Sundaresh fired. (forward caste)
AIG (signed outsourcing deal in 2007 in Europe with Accenture Indian frauds, collapsed in 2009) (forward caste)
AirBus (Qantas plane plunged 650 feet injuring passengers when its computer system written by India disengaged the auto-pilot). (forward caste)
Apple - R CLOSED in India in 2006. (forward caste)
Australia's National Australia Bank (Outsourced jobs to India in 2007, nationwide ATM and account failure in late 2010). (forward caste)
Bell Labs (Arun Netravalli took over, closed, turned into a shopping mall) (forward caste)
Boeing Dreamliner ES software (written by HCL, banned by FAA) (forward caste)
Bristol-Myers-Squibb (Trade Secrets and documents stolen in U.S. by Indian national guest worker) (forward caste)
Caymas - Startup run by Indian CEO, French director of dev, Chinese tech lead. Closed after 5 years of sucking VC out of America. (forward caste)
Caterpillar misses earnings a mere 4 months after outsourcing to India, Inc. (forward caste)
Circuit City - Outsourced all IT to Indian-run IBM and went bankrupt shortly thereafter.(forward caste)
ComAir crew system run by 100% Indian IT workers caused the 12/25/05 U.S. airport shutdown when they used a short int instead of a long int (forward caste)
Deloitte - 2010 - this Indian-packed consulting company is being sued under RICO fraud charges by Marin Country, California for a failed solution. (forward caste)
Dell - call center (closed in India) (forward caste)
Delta call centers (closed in India) (forward caste)
Fannie Mae - Hired large numbers of Indians, had to be bailed out. Indian logic bomb creator found guilty. (forward caste)
GM - Was booming in 2006, signed $300 million outsourcing deal with Wipro that same year, went bankrupt 3 years later (forward caste)
HSBC ATMs (software taken over by Indians, failed in 2006) (forward caste)
Intel Whitefield processor project (cancelled, Indian staff canned) (forward caste)
Lehman (Spectramind software bought by Wipro, ruined, trashed by Indian programmers) (forward caste)
Medicare - Defrauded by Indian national doctor Arun Sharma & wife in the U.S. (forward caste)
Microsoft - Employs over 35,000 H-1Bs. Stock used to be $100. Today it's lucky to be over $25. Not to mention that Vista thing. (forward caste)
MIT Media Lab Asia (canceled) (forward caste)
PeopleSoft (Taken over by Indians in 2000, collapsed). (forward caste)
PepsiCo - Slides from #1 to #3 during Indian CEO Indra Nooyi' watch. (forward caste)
Polycom - Former senior executive Sunil Bhalla charged with insider trading. (forward caste)
Qantas - See AirBus above (forward caste)
Quark (Alukah Kamar CEO, fired, lost 60% of its customers to Adobe because Indian-written QuarkExpress 6 was a failure) (forward caste)
Rolls Royce (Sent aircraft engine work to India in 2006, engines delayed for Boeing 787, and failed on at least 2 Quantas planes in 2010, cost Rolls $500m). (forward caste)
SAP - Same as Deloitte above in 2010. (forward caste)
Skype (Madhu Yarlagadda fired) (forward caste)
State of Indiana $867 million FAILED IBM project, IBM being sued (forward caste)
State of Texas failed IBM project. (forward caste)
Sun Micro (Taken over by Indian and Chinese workers in 2001, collapsed, had to be sold off to Oracle). (forward caste)
UK's NHS outsourced numerous jobs including health records to India in mid-2000 resulting in $26 billion over budget. (forward caste)
Union Bank of California - Cancelled Finacle project run by India's Inf