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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 $49.5 million contract to develop a health benefit exchange for the District of Columbia. The contract was awarded to a U.S.-based Infosys subsidiary, Infosys Public Services. That's one of the larger government contracts won by an offshore outsourcing firm, but it's unclear whether any of the work will be done overseas. The District isn't disclosing any contract details. An FOIA request for the contract has been submitted. Infosys is one of the largest users of H-1B visas, and has been under a grand jury investigation for its use of B1 visitor visas."
for why the H-1B system ought to be massively reduced and US contracts should be awarded only to actual US companies instead of shell-game "subsidiaries."
These kinds of contracts are supposed to be bid out to the lowest bidder.
If that actually happens: people complain that a company like Infosys wins the contract.
If it doesn't happen: people complain that the government is overpaying for IT services, and back up their allegations by quoting a much lower price someone in the private sector got (...from Infosys) as evidence that the government is inefficient.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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.
Number? Studies? Actual data? I keep hearing this kind of crap. The problem is every time a project I was on got associated with off shoring it ended up costing time and effort here to cover up the screw ups.
Again, present actual facts. I am sick and tired of the same old sound bites that just never seem to be true.
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.
How about the real question, since companies are ephemeral entities with no real way to measure their "americanness." Why have we inserted pointless middlemen of contracting companies into our government's process of managing itself. The fact is that it's an internal project, and having developers working for the government wouldn't really cost us much more. We've yoked ourselves to the wagon of privatization, without really caring what that means. I'm not entirely convinced of the value of having entire industries built around providing workers to the government when the government can damn well hire its own employees.
You know, I know the argument tends to reach fever pitches of hysterics on both sides, but the core reasons for not undertaking government sponsored health-care is because ultimately it makes promises that the government won't be able to deliver on in the long run.
It has little do do with "deserving health care" or "not being communists".
The fact is that health care is a gigantic black hole that you can pay for while things are good, but sooner or later, something happens and flushes it down the toilet. Demographic collapse is already threatening to destroy pensions. Consider what happens when all your old people live even longer, but are still retired and getting government supported health care, but there are fewer workers to pay for it.
Hopefully, our efficiency will get that much better than we can support them, but the reality is that the market appears to be evening out labor cost disparities by flooding production into markets where labor has a low cost due to years of artificially protecting wages of First World workers.
Fully utilizing and improving the lot of poorer countries and their people is helping humanity overall in the long run, but until wages even out, those who were sailing on top of artificially produced wage disparities are going to suffer a loss of standard of living.
So, in the end, the fact is that while everyone wants free or "better" health care, just legislating it into existence doesn't actually make it work, at least not in the long run. Some of us would prefer that we didn't make promises that we can't responsibly keep in the long run, and would prefer to hold the line at something like meaningful reform to improve efficiency.
Personally, I see government health care, and its eventual failure as something that could throw the country into complete chaos and even rebellion. It would be sad indeed if we ended up in a bloody revolution and eventual dictatorship simply because we couldn't avoid destroying ourselves with "bread and circuses". I know that seems a little alarmist, but look at the past and understand that revolutions like that happen when governments start writing checks that can't be cashed, but the people are accustomed to expecting that these issues will be handled by the government, and they are angered when their needs aren't met to their expectations. In retrospect, I wonder if perhaps it is already too late, and if the time to stop this was before we even developed this reliance on government.
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
I work for Accenture, my counterparts in India cost 1/5 of my wage and in many ways equal my quality. I'm not going to stick my fingers in my ears and him loudly, it is the facts.
So in the name of helping the american economy you should clearly accept an 80% pay cut to make yourself competitive with someone from India :)
(PS - This is a joke, in my experience offshoring to India is an utter disaster as your average indian outsourced development company will never give you an honest assessment of time involved in a project or actually admit when they are going to overrun the deadline before they do, causing any sort of confrontation is just too alien to the local culture even when it is better in the long run)
I dont read
Average salary of systems administrator in India - ~$4,000 US
Average salary of a systems administrator in Washington DC - ~$75,000 US
Availability of your systems administrator when the shit hits the fan:
Outsourced to India - ~The third Thursday after Monsoon season ends.
In-house in DC - ~Already waiting in your office with an apology and an action plan.
Which one do you want to explain to the board you hired to save $71k/year, while the company hemorrhages 10x that per day in downtime because of your savings?
Now in fairness, I've worked with Indian H1Bs, and they pretty much have the same skills profiles as Americans - Half can just about get the job done when nothing exciting comes up, a quarter suck, and a quarter rock. But despite that, outsourcing still simply doesn't work for one simple reason - Management views it as waving the magic green wand and making a pesky project someone else's problem; when in reality, outsourced work requires more careful management than traditional in-house development.
Any PHB who thinks coding something to spec means a job well done, has never actually looked at the craptastic quality of most real-world specs.