Offshoring: Not the end of IT as we know it

Though an important trend in IT, offshoring is not going to make the UK into a nation of hairdressers and waiters, says Mark Kobayashi-Hillary - and the BCS has the facts to prove it.

I spent much of the summer of 2003 holed up in my attic-cum-office trying to write about my experience of outsourcing and India. While I was writing my book, I thought I would check the website of the British Computer Society, as I expected to find some useful research material analysing the effect of offshoring on the IT industry in the UK.

When I searched the site I sank grimacing into my swivel chair, horrified by the search results. The BCS, this august body of chartered information systems professionals, had no information at all about offshoring - the closest match was how to take your BCS examination in India. With about 100 conferences a year on the subject in London alone and a torrent of media coverage I felt outraged that the topic could be ignored so completely.

I fired off a letter of discontent to the editor of the members' magazine and thought no more of it until I received an email from outsourcing writer Elizabeth Sparrow in February this year. Elizabeth explained the BCS felt they should be researching the offshore IT phenomenon and she had been asked to chair a working party with immediate effect - would I join?

The working party spent from March to October producing a detailed analysis of how offshoring affects IT in the UK. The final report was published last week and is available to download, free of charge, on the BCS website. (silicon.com also wrote a news piece summarising the highlights.) I am biased, as I was involved in the production of this report, but I do feel this is an important contribution to the debate on offshoring in this country.

There is a lot of practical information that readers can take from this new report and I personally feel that two of our findings stand out from the rest. First, the situation is not as bad as some would have you believe. Almost a million people work in the UK IT industry and this figure has remained steady for the past three years. Adverts for vacant IT jobs grew by 22 per cent in the first quarter of this year and unemployment affects just 3.6 per cent of IT professionals compared to a national average of 4.8 per cent.

Second, your career is in your own hands more than ever before, something many of us have been vaguely aware of but which is now being emphasised by the global availability of IT resources Over a third of UK employers with IT vacancies just can't find people who have the right blend of business and IT knowledge, so the opportunities are out there.

Some commentators have talked of a future where Britain will be no more than a world heritage site populated with hairdressers and waiters. Where do they form these opinions? Have they actually analysed any demographic, employment and skills requirement data?

I feel saddened when the same rumours and ill-defined ideas are trotted out as a prediction of the future by commentators who should know better. This is an important debate and it should not be trivialised by elevating pub conversations about offshoring to the point where those arguments are considered as fact. silicon.com is a good example of a media source that has worked hard to understand offshoring - reporter Andy McCue left his comfortable office and took a flight to Mumbai this year to see what is really going on.

We are witnessing no more than a rise in globalisation because of the ease with which cheaper telecoms and the internet allows communication to take place. The UK still has five times the number of people working in IT as India has providing IT export services. Offshoring remains a tiny proportion of the global spend on IT services. Unemployment in the IT profession is low and decreasing and the number of jobs advertised in on the increase. Offshoring is an important trend but the facts cannot be disputed - it is not the end of IT as we know it and kids should still be enrolling for computer science degrees.

Offshoring is an easy and emotional target because what employers are looking for is changing and it is no longer good enough to be a great Java coder. That's the kind of skill that can be sourced from anywhere in the world. Now you need to understand a local business domain or region and be able to offer technical skills as well. Some intellectual skills are becoming commodities that can be traded globally.

To criticise a company for utilising global resources would be like suggesting we should all be at the theatre in person rather than watching a show on TV. We cannot step back to an era before the internet so it is important for organisations such as the BCS to analyse how we can manage careers in future. It's a whole new ball game because lifelong learning has become more than a buzzword, it's now essential for your future.

The BCS is entering a period of renaissance. With a renewed focus on helping IT professionals to map out their career, the society seems to have found a strong sense of purpose and I hope the recent research into offshoring is another step up the ladder.

Mark Kobayashi-Hillary is director of research for Commonwealth Business Council Technologies Ltd and author of Outsourcing to India: The Offshore Advantage. Mark is a founding member of the BCS Offshore Outsourcing Working Party.