Student Projects:Outsourcing PPF

Outsourcing: Past, Present and Future

I'm still not sure about the project topic. This seems a really interesting topic, but I'm not able to find too many "policy" related issues here. I wonder if we should look at some other topics? Also, we are looking for team members (c.f. Ed's recent mail). So if you're interested and/or have great ideas, do mail in! -- Diwaker

Sub Pages

I added this section to help us organize our thoughts and work. I copied our discussions from emails and the discussion page and organized them on these pages. -David Dorwin

Links to other pages for discussion and organization. (I think we should have pages for each phase and component of our project.)

1. Topic Discussion
2. Sub-topics (collect thoughts on each on their respective pages)
   1. History
   2. Outsourcing and Offshoring
   3. Visas
   4. Tax benefits
   5. Politics
3. Project Description (due Nov. 8; 10% of project grade)
4. Draft Paper (due Dec. 3; 20% of project grade)
5. Final Paper (due Dec. 10; 70% of project grade)

Team

• Diwaker Gupta
• Kiran Kalyan
• Stuart Schimler
• David Dorwin
• Andrae Gonzales

Goals

• Study the evolution of outsourcing -- in particular, the role played by policies in shaping this practice
• Evaluate the impact on the IT industry in a global context
• Study the conflict between public and the IT industry (the H1-B visa cap a case in point)
• Outsourcing : Job drain,Brain drain or both? - possibly explore purely back-office jobs being outsourced while research,so far,has remained close to home
• Study policies enacted to safeguard and/or downsize outsourcing [ India vs. US ] and their possible effect on future IT laws and trends

References

Diwaker: Some interesting articles related to outsourcing

• http://blameindiawatch.blogspot.com/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsourcing
• http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.02/india.html
• http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,65269,00.html
• http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,59126,00.html
• http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/00/09/07/1613204.shtml
• http://slashdot.org/articles/03/06/06/1226232.shtml?tid=98&tid=99
• http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/05/0227255
• http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/04/2223226&tid=126
• http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/01/1448204&tid=156
• http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/15/116205&tid=126
• http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/06/05/1542250&tid=3
• http://www.ndtv.com/template/templatebusiness.asp?slug=BPO+issue+colours+US+polls&template=Bpobacklash&callid=5&id=21977
• http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/27/2253251
• Brad Struss: There was a study just completed by Seattle University regarding the impact outsourcing has had on companies here in Washington State. The study of ten companies showed that only one company performed laid workers off as a result of hiring outsourced workers. Here's an article in the Seattle Times with more details:
  http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=outsource21&date=20041021&query=outsourcing (requires users registration)
  The complete report is here: http://www.rateconline.org/docs/RATEC%20-SEASIM%20Global%20IT%20Soucing%20Study%20FINAL%20DOC.pdf
• Stuart Schimler Paper that is critical of the H1B visa program: http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.html