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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
Because it would cost D.C. about 5 times more if it was done here?
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.
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.
Yes, but it will cost 20 times more to be burdened by and the be forced to fix a shitty first implementation.
Do it right the first time or you're going to pay even more to do it right the second.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
You forgot the water fluoridation and vaccination conspiracies, Comrade.
Yeah, because American companies have an excellent track record with government IT projects.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
my counterparts in India cost 1/5 of my wage and in many ways equal my quality
I'm not sure if you are trying to sell us on the quality of the work done by off-shore workers, or your lack of quality. Either way it works I suppose.
BTW, I'm working 3 blocks north of you, and I've never seen an off-shore team that was of any quality.
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.
How is this any different than private corporations running the insurance? They'll make the same promises and just declare bankruptcy when they can't meet the obligations. They'll prescreen their population to ensure profitability (i.e. no pre-existing conditions, jacked up rates for the elderly, etc.) so enter government regulations... and if the government has to regulate to ensure fairness, why not let them administer the program? It seems to work (so far) in basically every other country in the world.
Fundamentally, health care (and education for that matter) aren't "market" products. Everybody needs them, and that is something the "free market" doesn't handle well in the case where some portion of the customer base cannot afford them.
The free market handles car sales and stuff like that great - prices float, lots of competition, but ultimately if you can't afford one you can do without. Maybe its inconvenient, but that's entirely different that say you with the congenital heart defect, who cannot afford the health care you need to stay alive.
Now the free market would simply say "fuck you" to those people and let them die. Can't afford the service = you don't get the service. After all, they were selected by random biology to suck up more resources to screw them, right?
The rest of us in the modern world, with the richest country in the history of the known universe, find this outcome simply unacceptable. In fact, rather than piss away the resources of the country on random bullshit to benefit the wealthy, how about investing some into the actual literal welfare of the population. You know, one of those functions government is supposed to provide for its people?
Your nightmare scenario about the failure of government health care leading to chaos is exactly balanced by the same failure of the private insurance/medical industry causing the same chaos. People get sick and have their retirements wiped out. A car accident through no fault of their own tosses the family into poverty. Debts mount people simply can't handle. Etc. Sorry but this is a time when government reliance is the only answer, that being: too goddamn bad medical industry, we're imposing a ceiling on the profits you're allowed to make. That's what it all revolves around, capping fees and controlling costs, versus private industry exercising monopoly situations to extract maximum profit of people's suffering.
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?
I saw, "D.C. Awards Obamacare IT Work To Offshore Outsourcer" and immediately thought, IBM?
I agree with you completely. Over the last 25+ years I have come in early to work with the German, French, Dutch, Finnish and Israilis. Every one of them had their own quirks and problems (including me) but we always manged to work together and get the problems solved. I even moved to Germany and wrote software there for 3 years. Had a blast.
I have often worked as a consultant here remotely. It can be tough to keep things together when you are remote. For the last 18 years there has often been been Indians along with the other nationalities in the office. I get along pretty well with them but I never claimed to get along with everybody in any situation.
I do not know what it is with outsourcing to India. It has in the projects I have been associated with be a failure. I believe it is partly culture and partly just the fact that we are pretty much exactly 12 hours out of phase and it makes it impossible to coordinate on a real time basis. I know it seems the concept of CYA is a strong one in the projects I have seen.