Wednesday, 11 July 2012

UK Sending IT jobs abroad means better jobs at home? That's What's Being Proposed

A recent article on ICT in Silicon.com has pegged the UK government as looking at outsourcing IT as a viable proposition, saying it will create 'better' jobs at home.
In a recent paper, the Cabinet Office has published guidance to help Government procurers consider supplier proposals called: “Government ICT Offshoring (International Sourcing) Guidance” (PDF).
This paper is targeted at Chief Information Officers (CIOs), Senior Information Risk Owners (SIROs), Senior Responsible Owners (SROs) and procurers in Government Departments and exchequer funded bodies, to help themmull over  supplier proposals which include offshore provision and which may offer value for money.
The guidance is focused primarily on situations in which suppliers of a procured service would wish to use offshore capability to deliver some or all of the service in question. It is not intended to deal with proposals to relocate inhouse services.
The document says,

"Arguably, jobs which are lost in the short term are often gained back as a result of a growing economy. So the medium long-run impact on UK employment is likely to be far less severe than the number of jobs apparently lost."
"Indeed, the net long-term impact might be for UK employment to rise as a result of the efficiency gains if the reallocation leads to higher growth as people/firms move into higher value-added activities."And... "...offshoring can create IT jobs in highly skilled areas such as requirements specification, security, architecture and commercial management".
And the paper numbers showing that a senior software engineer in the UK earns on average £38,750, compared with an average annual wage of £9,703 for an equivalent post in the top five offshoring destinations of India, China, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. 


No comments:

Post a Comment