Trend looks positive for recruitment in the IT and business process outsourcing industry, a top official of Cognizant said here today.

“The trend looks positive,” IT Major Cognizant’s Vice-Chairman Lakshmi Narayanan told reporters here.

“Many educational institutes have said that they are getting more campus placements this year”, Narayanan who is also the Chairman of ICT Academy of Tamil Nadu, said.

The ICT Academy of Tamil Nadu is a consortium of Government of India , Tamil Nadu Government and Confederation of Indian Industry ( CII )).

Stating that since its inception the ICT Academy has trained over 3,000 faculties, he called for good interaction between the Industry and Academia.

As part of bringing the two, he said a state level conference “Bridge 2011″ has planned to be conducted on February 16 here.

The conference would be on the theme “Focus on Skills for Future and Innovation”, he said.

Source:http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/jobs/trend-for-hiring-by-it-bpo-cos-positive-cognizant/articleshow/7420396.cms

When a state has a $3.7 billion budget deficit, every politician is a surgeon looking to make deep cuts. One of the cuts recently suggested by Gov. Bev Perdue would come from privatizing the state’s information technology services.

But before state IT services go under the knife, North Carolina taxpayers should get a second opinion. Other states have undertaken this exploratory surgery with a long list of failures and cost overruns to show for it.

IT privatization in Texas led to a loss of taxpayer information due to “chronic failures” in data backup and recovery, security, disaster recovery, systems monitoring and management, and staffing and service levels. This was reported by Texas’ chief information officer in a seven-page letter last July to IT contractor IBM, detailing the failures of the 2006 privatization contract. That contract is now being rebid.

Texas taxpayers could not get basic public services, such as car registration renewals, unemployment checks and Medicaid benefits. IBM, on the other hand, collected on the $863 million contract for services promised but not delivered. The clear winner? IBM.

In Virginia, problems with a $2.4 billion IT privatization contract with Northrop Grumman caused massive computer meltdowns in state agencies. In August 2010, 26 state agencies lost web services for more than a week, including the state tax agency, DMV and Board of Elections. Too bad for thousands of citizens who intended to pay taxes, register to vote or have their licenses processed that week.

These failures caused costly legislative audits, service outages, project delays and performance problems. In order to fix the problems, Northrop Grumman was happy to add to Virginia’s running tab – to the tune of an additional $152 million. No surprise that the state’s chief information officer was later fired.

Indiana Family and Social Services Administration’s 10-year, $1.6 billion privatization contract with IBM has gone so foul that both parties decided to sue each other last May. The deal was to have overhauled Indiana’s social services system. Instead, not only does Indiana lack a viable computer system, it is also paying more than $5.25 million in legal fees to sue IBM. Whose pocket will this come out of? What do taxpayers have for this outsourcing deal? A huge bill with no new services.

It’s also no surprise to me that IT privatization deals have failed to achieve the budget savings states were seeking. IT privatization in these states also failed to stimulate the economy. These exercises have put American employees out of work, adding to unemployment costs.

The cherry on top? Such vulnerability in technological control puts taxpayers’ privacy and financial security in harm’s way. Private companies are concerned with profits, not people. Private contractors answer to Wall Street and the bottom line.

Contract companies outsource their IT work overseas to countries not subject to the U.S. laws that govern and safeguard your privacy. This includes your tax information with the Department of Revenue and medical information with the Department of Health and Human Services. All of this shows that IT privatization could also be a clear violation of federal regulations.

The contrast is clear. Public employees are motivated to provide quality public services to taxpayers. Citizens are our stockholders. When it snows, we come to work. When you call us, we answer the phone. When there is a problem, we fix it. And when we work with a citizen’s personal information, we guard and protect it as required by law. We serve the citizens of North Carolina because we stand by your side as fellow citizens of North Carolina.

Before Perdue and legislators consider cutting IT services under the guise of saving money and selling North Carolinians’ private information to lowest bidder, it’s time for a second opinion.

Lynn McGarrah is a technology support specialist in the state Office of Information Technology Services. She wrote this article for the State Employees Association of N.C.

Source:http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/02/03/964100/the-pitfalls-of-outsourcing-it.html