From: "Rich Gauszka" 

http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/03/10/76155_11OPanalysts_1.html

Experts offer fresh perspective on offshoring IT At a time when data is in
short supply, a new report yields in-depth findings



By David L. Margulius

March 10, 2006
One of the problems with the debate over IT offshoring has been a lack of
facts on the table. There's been plenty of rhetoric and emotion, but little
in the way of credible data.

Now, thanks to the academic, ultrageeky Association for Computing
Machinery, that's all changed. Its recently completed report,
"Globalization and Offshoring of Software," is a monster. This
fascinating tome, which includes the most comprehensive bibliography I've
seen since my last college term paper, is an aggregation of existing
research by a task force of more than 30 experts in economics, public
policy, computing, and human resources management.

This is truly great desert island reading, a fascinating snapshot of how
globalization is really working from a non-U.S.-centric perspective. You
could spend days scouring its charts and tables ("Figure 5.10 -- Total
Flows of Inventors  between Countries") and in-depth country profiles
("The Structure of the Russian Software Industry"), in addition
to its political analysis.

Interestingly, the U.S. media has focused on one sound bite, which is that
predictions of massive U.S. IT job losses to India and China over the next
couple decades are greatly exaggerated. The real loss will be a mere 2 or 3
percent, the report says, assuming the United States gets its education act
together and cranks out more computer science majors. Of course, this may
not happen if kids think that all the IT jobs are going overseas anyway.

Although there's nothing shocking in the report's main findings, it does
paint a non-zero-sum picture that contradicts the usual win-lose scenarios
painted by offshoring's detractors. Higher skilled IT jobs such as IT
research are starting to cross borders in greater numbers, the report
finds. But developed countries need not suffer as developing countries do
more IT work for export, because IT globalization will enable greater
specialization, which in turn will drive growth.

The report emphasizes the importance of strengthening education, technical
training, and R&D investment, while cutting away regulatory barriers to
the free flow of talent. Interestingly, the finding singled out problems in
both India's and China's education systems -- India's being too elitist and
China's too focused on rote learning. And it noted the United States'
challenge of raising interest in math and science programs in primary
education.

 -----------------

In case some of the article's links vanished.

http://www.acm.org/globalizationreport/

http://www.acm.org/globalizationreport/bibliography.htm

http://www.acm.org/globalizationreport/biographies.htm


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