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."

Comments

Yet another great argument...

[Moryath]

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."

Re:Yet another great argument...

[penglust]

Nice sound bite. Too bad it is only that. We have never had, and should never have, true free market capitalism. The government has always provided many services to the businesses that make up our economy.

Even if they had not, out taxes are paying for these contracts. Our government is supposed to represent the citizens. It is in the best interest of the citizens on this country to get people back to work.

Re:Yet another great argument...

[h4rr4r]

The race to the bottom only benefits the select few on top. With your idea we would all be working for $1/day while the rich get even richer.

If you want a good example of this see hong kong or another place that allows those kinds of income inequalities. I would rather most americans be able to afford homes and food instead of most living in squalor so a select few can be super rich.

Re:Yet another great argument...

[Moryath]

How does that fit into the free market capitalism that made America great? If someone else can do the same job cheaper, hire them instead.

You mean to say, "If someone can be hired for slave wages and locked into a single-employer contract with no chance to move jobs rather than hiring people on an equal footing."

This is about as far from "free market capitalism" as it comes. The H-1B system deliberately alters the agreement and creates a semi-slave labor deliberately paying under-market wages.

And then there's all the fraud in the system. Including falsely inflated skills listings designed to keep anyone from successfully applying for the jobs later salted to H-1Bs with far less than the originally advertised qualifications. And of course the demand for H-1Bs rather than actual EB-5s where they would have legal right to leave for better employment if it was offered by another company.

Don't you dare use the term "free market capitalism", you fucking slavemonger. It's nothing of the sort.

Re:Yet another great argument...

[dkleinsc]

Including falsely inflated skills listings designed to keep anyone from successfully applying for the jobs later salted to H-1Bs with far less than the originally advertised qualifications.

Actually, they don't have to go through that rigamarole any longer: they quietly dropped the requirement that jobs be offered to citizens before hiring an H-1B the last time the various tech kingpins called up their patsies in Congress to ask for a change.

Re:Yet another great argument...

[gestalt_n_pepper]

The race to the bottom argument is a logical fallacy.
Yes, it's only in that inconvenient real world that it happens. In case you've forgotten, wages in the USA started stagnating in the 70s and the divide between wealthy and poor grows larger each year. Moreover, the real world examples of unregulated capitalism (e.g. Pakistan, Somalia, Mexico, the USA, China) show exactly what happens when the government "gets out of the way." This is solely due to changes in government taxation regulation changes on high income earners and high income corporations, and the demise of checks on finance (i.e. Glass-steagall).

Re:Yet another great argument...

[lgw]

Everyone working in tech in America is in the 1% - of the world. There's no moral harm when a job moves overseas to someone who objectively needs the money more. Arguing that the rich have too much is a poor strategy when you're part of the richest 1%.

And the race to the bottom ends with everywhere in the world having a real middle class - hardly a dystopia. Everything people say today about work going to China or India was said when I was young about work going to Japan, and later about South Korea. Emerging nations do eventually emerge, and everyone benefits as a result.

Re:Yet another great argument...

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Your rhetoric doesn't align well with reality. Imports of sugar from Mexico grew under NAFTA. HFCS has more to do with profit margins and "Big Food's" ability to squeeze as much merchantable material from its raw materials.

If a large food corporation purchase corn and process it for food, the corporation would rather process the by-products into a useable/sellable ingredient than having to pay for disposal. They can undercut sugar as much as they want since break even or a little loss is still less of an expenditure than disposal.

Re:Yet another great argument...

[hawguy]

Everyone working in tech in America is in the 1% - of the world. There's no moral harm when a job moves overseas to someone who objectively needs the money more. Arguing that the rich have too much is a poor strategy when you're part of the richest 1%.

And the race to the bottom ends with everywhere in the world having a real middle class - hardly a dystopia. Everything people say today about work going to China or India was said when I was young about work going to Japan, and later about South Korea. Emerging nations do eventually emerge, and everyone benefits as a result.

But when the job moves overseas so do all of the secondary effects.

The $100K/year programmer may be in the top 1% so no great harm if that job moves overseas (except for well except for the programmer, but that job is in the 1% and we don't care about the 1%).

The problem is that that $100K/year programmer owns a house, and the property taxes help pay for services that the 99% use.

That $100K/year programmer goes to restaurants, where the 99% work.

That $100K/year programmer gets her blouses dry cleaned, and the dry cleaner's employees are in the 99%.

That $100K/year programmer pays federal state & local taxes (including sales tax), gets hair cuts, oil changes, buys groceries, remodels his house, and a multitude of other tasks that give money to the 99%.

When that $100K/year job is outsourced to an outsourcing company for $20K/year, then none of the money stays in the USA.

Re:pretty much required, isn't it?

[h4rr4r]

Is this cost plus or fixed price?

I ask because I suspect the former and that there will be lots of extra costs not factored into the quote. Like rewriting it over and over when the lowest bidder not surprisingly supplies crap.

What an inflammatory submission

[GodfatherofSoul]

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...

Dey took are jerbs!!!

[meta-monkey]

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.

Re:Why?

[penglust]

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.

new reality

[AdmV0rl0n]

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.

Re:Why?

[pla]

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.

Infosys will always do a lowball bid.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

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.