Gov IT contractors hire staff in India to work on benefits system

Hundreds of computer technicians in India are being hired to help develop an IT system for the government's universal credit welfare programme, work potentially worth hundreds of millions of pounds, despite promises that large data projects would remain in the UK. Workers in Bangalore and Mumbai are being hired by the …

[David Hicks]

False Economy

The problem is the way this is done to budget.

You get the cheapest price from an outsourcing agreement, but that totally neglects the wider effects that the price -

Goes out of the UK econonomy

Doesn't take into account anything that would come back in taxes if kept in the UK

Could be, but now isn't, stimulating economic growth.

Now I know that if the government said "UK Only" then they'd get in trouble with various UN trade agencies and the EU, but IMHO these agreements need to be revised. I agree with free trade as a principle, particularly as it applies to the private sector, I just can't agree with sending masses of tax money out of the country when there's so much unemployment at home.

[jm83]

Re: False Economy

Exactly the same logic as the 'cut jobs / austerity drive to boost the economy'.

[David Hicks]

Re: austerity

No, it's not the same logic at all.

The public sector is huge and expensive and needs trimming. There is the same problem, you need to do it without depressing the economy further. However 'sending all the money abroad' and 'not spending as much on the public sector' are different phenomena. The hope with the latter is that the tax burden eventually falls (or doesn't have to rise), which stimulates the economy by not taking the money out of the public's pockets in the first place.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: False Economy

"In relation to cost, the greater the amount of development work we can do offshore, the lower the overall blended rate for the programme"

Yes, but that ignores the costs of paying our workers to do nothing. You'd think the gubbermint would look at the larger picture ffs. Yes it may cost more *as a project* to deliver it in the UK, but the net benefit to UK PLC of having lots of workers earning, paying tax and spending their decent salaries, less the dole we would be paying them if the jobs were India must be helathier for our economy, Shirley?

I understand the time argument, but from my experience of using Devs in India, it is false economy as the project invariably needs "rescuing" later on as the remote developing is not as efficient at picking up (for example) usability problems early, when they are relatively cheap to fix..

[Vic]

Re: False Economy

> Yes, but that ignores the costs of paying our workers to do nothing.

Precisely.

> You'd think the gubbermint would look at the larger picture ffs.

*snort*

> Yes it may cost more *as a project* to deliver it in the UK

Or it might not.

the headline figure will be lower for the offshored project. But will it run to budget?

A UK-delivered project might actually end up being *cheaper*, despite a more expensive initial quote.

Vic.

[binky_256]

Re: False Economy

I currently work for a bank which is doing the same thing (but with IT architecture roles).

a few observations about this whole "blended rate" malarkey.

- the quality of the offshore workers is for the large part dismal. Sure, there are a few diamonds there but for the most part the the quality of worker just isn't there. Invariably, there's additional oversight that's needed from a local resource in order to get the desired quality

- from my experience, the work may be around the clock but that either means that you're always out of synch with a particular person OR you speak to someone new every time. Not exactly an ideal way to deliver a critical project, is it?

- the amount of additional governance and controls to ensure that the work being done is as per spec, as well as all of the additional controls around sensitive data going out of the organisation and country just adds more money to the bottom line

this doesn't make sense, and the middle/senior manage who authorised this should be taken out and flogged have having the wrong sort of backbone. They should back UK IT girls and guys, not ship it off to save a few quid.

[Anonymous Coward]

we were promised jobs

yet the 'new jobs' have been created abroad. So not only do we miss out on jobs, we miss out on training and skills, we miss out on taxes generated from the jobs and we miss out on the spending that would be made in our shops.

5 own goals........

[Anonymous Coward]

Offshoring jobs to help the unemployed? Such delicious irony...

[Ken 16]

the unemployed of the UK aren't developers

The DWP want 3rd parties to provide systems and shoulder risk and they want the lowest bidder, with a cost case which requires Global resourcing.

If the DWP were prepared to pay a little more, they could near-shore to EU resources in middle Europe and get better productivity at the expense of some communications barriers.

If the DWP wanted to train UK unemployed to develop, then use them to develop their systems at government risk then they could do so. It'd cost a lot more and take a lot longer but then there'd be skilled resources to pimp out to other countries.

[Just Thinking]

Re: the unemployed of the UK aren't developers

Most of the developers I worked with, certainly in my early career, were self taught. These days it is easier than ever to teach yourself programming.

Anybody who has been sat on their arse for however many months/years, drawing benefits and watching Jeremy Kyle, without realising that teaching themselves to program the computer in the corner might be some help ... probably doesn't have what it takes. How are you going to train them to be decent developers?

[Khaptain]

2nd thought on Irony

There was a time when Indians left India in order to come to the UK for work, etc...

What happens, the work gets outsourced to india.......Catch 22..

[I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects]

22nd thought on Irony

Maybe they are planning ahead.

All the Asian workers not employed in the all night corner shops will go home to find work maybe as taxi drivers to the already employed over there. Or suppliers of westernised oriental peripatetic provisions.

[grip]

Re: False economy

And you thought the rest of the world are dumb to agree to your highly biased demands.?

A long time ago, the West accused the rest of the world of protecting their markets. Some 25 years later, things have come full circle.

And the funny thing is, you think this is reversible.

Keep dreaming.

Your anger is better vented against your own IT managers and business leaders. Oh wait - they are in Caribbean islands!

[David Hicks]

Re: False economy

Oh I see, you disagree with the concept of free markets. That's not what I was talking about.

I do think it's wrong to restict access to consumers and workforces, I don't think it's wrong to have a preference to spend taxpayer money locally. These are different things.

[Jah]

Ministers ex-Business People, really?

I cannot understand how Ministers make such silly decisions. I thought many had Business backgrounds; they should be looking at how Government expenditure maximises economic benefits not just looking at drive down costs!

[Blofeld's Cat]

Re: Ministers ex-Business People, really?

"I thought many [ministers] had Business backgrounds"

On the contrary, most ministers and MPs have no experience of life outside local, regional, or national government. Many started their careers as Research Assistants and climbed the political slippery pole from there.

The same is true of the civil servants that advise them. They have nearly all spent their careers within one Whitehall department or another. External advisers usually have an agenda of their own to promote.

The few politicians of all parties that do have a business, or scientific, background tend to stand out from the crowd. They can often be found safely tucked away in sub-committees.

Sadly these are not the people that do well inside political parties. A mediocre person will rarely promote anyone who can challenge or disprove their own views.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ministers ex-Business People, really?

It could be worse, we could have a PM who's nothing but a cluess PR spiv - all talk and spin but no action.

Oh... wait....

[Andrew 63]

But what about the many million unemployed.....

..... In this country?

Typical *CON*servative Government.

[Velv]

Re: But what about the many million unemployed.....

Except these agreements were kicked off by the previous administration, although I will grant you it was the current administration who continued them

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: But what about the many million unemployed.....

"...Typical *CON*servative Government..."

About the third time this week I've heard similar sentiments expressed. Let me fix it for you:

"...Typical Government..."

I knew this would happen!

Democracy seems to work on the principle that the populace have a collective memory only slightly longer than that of a goldfish. When Labour were in power, fucking us over royally, with practically every law they brought in, everyone conveniently forgot what a bunch of Nazis Thatcher and her successors had been and couldn't wait to get Labour out and vote the Tories and old "C3P0 made of spam" back in.

Now the Tories have been in power for ten minutes, everyone has likewise forgotten what a bunch of tossers Labour were and are now whingeing about 'Tory gummint' and doubtless preparing to vote Millipede and co. in again, next time.

Jeebus people! try and focus for more than ten minutes and on something apart from 'Zzz-elebrity Paint-Drying on Fat Ice'.

Take the Red Pill FFS!

[Anonymous Coward]

Accenture again?

Perhaps putting our money ( the government administers it on the nation's behalf) with other companies would be a boost to the economy and encourage competition.

[Blofeld's Cat]

So...

A politician lied, who would have thought it?

I'm sure there are competent and ethical IT companies in India, but the projects I worked on all seem to have chosen the other ones.

The main problem we faced was that there seemed to be a culture of not reporting problems, or delays, which were then covered up by shipping incomplete or buggy code just before the delivery date.

This became clear to nearly everyone very early on. Once "final" modules started being delivered, the project managers, also got the idea that something might be wrong.

There also seemed to be some difficulty in understanding the detailed specification we provided. API functions were often coded with additional or missing parameters, and concepts such as thread safe and memory leakage were clearly a mystery to them.

Goodness knows how they would cope with a typical government "dynamic spec".

Most of the code was ultimately re-written in-house after the sub-contractor was quietly paid off.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: So...

What we saw when our mothership decided to add resources from India, is that the staff seemed to be rotated through companies, a constant state of flux with regards to which individuals were actually allocated to our company. As such there was a constant grind of knowledge transfer and half finished projects.

[Ken 16]

Re: So...

Yes, the offshore resources are used because they're cheap, they're cheap because their pay is low. When they get some experience, like any other IT professional, they will look for a better paid job. They'll get one to supervise the newly hired staff with no experience. In a booming IT economy like India's that's a never ending spiral.

[Field Marshal Von Krakenfart]

Re: So...

A politician lied, who would have thought it?

No No No No, politicians NEVER ever tell lies (unless you're Jeffrey Archer), but that's not the same as telling the truth.

Grayling told parliament that he would not allow his department's major IT projects to go abroad.

Quite clearly, 1) this is not a major project and 2) grayling's department did not send the work abroad, the project was given to Ãĉĉěńţūřė/IBM in the UK and Ãĉĉěńţūřė/IBM sent the work abroad.

This has several advantages for the lying self-serving kunts politicians, 1) they can claim they tendered out the work to the most 'completive' bid, and 2) when the project is totally FUBAR, it will be the consultants fault and 3) when they retire on their inflation proof non-contributory pensions they can become non-executive directors of [insert name of consultancy firm],.

See, it’s easy to lie speak like a politician.

[Drummer Boy]

I thought everyone knew

That outsourcing to India, does not cost less anymore. Yes the day rate you pay a developer is lower, but the management overheads of running offshore, and the sheer depth of detail design specs need to be written to quickly negates any saving in day rate.

Having been through this with a company I know first hand.

As for 24hr working, put a night shift on on the UK!! Or are they referring to taking advantage of poor worker treatment in the sub continent?

[Chuckl]

Computer Technicians???? who wrote this rubbish?

[auburnman]

I think we could borrow a favourite from the government playbook and play the terrist card to get this shut down.

Shouldn't be difficult to lather the redtop rags into an uproar about how "outsourcing our identity data endangers our borders by making it easier for TERRORISTS to forge UK ID's" or some equivalent bollocks. Then just stir until you hear backpedalling.

[Simon Watson]

Offshoring and Govt IT

My experience of working with off shoring software development is that unless the specification is done in excruciating detail is just doesn't work. Indian software development outfits also suffer from massive employee turnover and it's unusual for them to be able to develop significant project experience and expertise.

Govt projects are notorious for changing the spec again and again and again, which is why they often fail or only deliver with massively over budget.

24hour development is a myth in general as it's very hard to get different people/groups to work on the same functionality in an efficient manner. You might deliver quicker overall, put productivity is lower and costs are higher than developing at a single site.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Offshoring and Govt IT

The turnover is a cultural thing, there's an Indian guy (resident in the UK) working here, we were having a conversation about offshored resource, and he said that in India, unless you're seen to be moving your career around frequently, people assume there's something wrong with you or your work. The perception is that anyone good hops between jobs all the time.

[Simon Watson]

Re: Offshoring and Govt IT

I know that and understand why they do it, but it still creates expertise and experience problems which is frustrating.

[Anonymous Coward]

What a surprise - NOT

Our political morons at it again.

[JaitcH]

The Americans Know how to Do IT.

The US Government simply stipulates that certain work will be done within the USA by US citizens, not Wanabe's or Aliens but real citizens. And it works, only Canada has waivers and then only for certain classes of security items.

It;s a pity Cameron doesn't consider his fellow citizens first. Besides, he is also missing out on all that income tax whereas the money paid to Indians is gone forever.

As for private data going abroad, does the government even consider the increased risks incurred by using foreign nationals to process data? Does it comply with EU law?

The banks are no better, many fob you off to someone working in a Mumbai sweatshop for handful of Rupees per hour to save money but for customers they are near useless. I spent GBP40 trying to get hold of a British person located in Britain who would actually understand that SaiGon is not an English city when the World's Most Incompetent Bank - HSBC - failed to deliver a card.

Now they have sent me an electronic PIN device that doesn't work - it produces strange hieroglyphs that suggests it's malfunctioning. Wonderful stuff, High Tech. Another opportunity to speak to the Mumbai cretins.

[I'm Brian and so's my wife]

Re: The Americans Know how to Do IT.

On the subject of your bank, have a look at smile.co.uk

Competent, UK-based staff and their Northern accents (based in and near Manchester) are perfectly intelligible.

[Gordon 10]

Re: The Americans Know how to Do IT.

Careful about smile.

They have started using shared called centers with the Co-Op and the training is sadly lacking and the famous smile customer service is descending downwards fast.

Still UK based but not as good as they used to be.

Based on person experience me & the wifey YMMV.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The Americans Know how to Do IT.

@Gordon 10 - Smile IS the Co-Op.

I've been with Co-Op bank for 15 years and have no complaint at all.

[Uncle Slacky]

Re: The Americans Know how to Do IT.

They probably didn't know about "Saigon" because it hasn't officially been called that for nearly 40 years - it's "Ho Chi Minh City", and would be listed in the atlas/phone book/encyclopedia as such.

[Crisp]

What's that Chris Grayling?

Do as I say, not as I do? Ok, carry on.

[Giles Jones]

Quite negative postings on here. Who says IT workers in India are less proficient? my experience is quite the opposite. Microsoft has lots of developers from India.

Also, bear in mind the time zone differences in having outsourcing which can be advantageous for testing. When the working day in the UK is ending people based in another country can still be working for a few hours. So the next day developers can come in and have test results.

It is surely advantageous to make use of the whole 24 hours in a day?

[Anonymous Coward]

Quality trumps quantity every single time

"Who says IT workers in India are less proficient". I do. I base this not only on personal experience with different indian vendors in a variety of roles but also the experiences recounted by colleages, many of whom are of Indian descent and concur with the sentiment. IT schools in India are degree factories that produce graduates who're acceptable programmers provided, as others have pointed out, the specifications are excruciatingly exact. They are simply incapable, on average, of dealing with ambiguity or extrapolating detail from a broad brush. In fact the level of detail required in order to manage the risk of an Indian offshore development is such that you are generally better off putting that effort into an MDM approach and generating the code.

[Why Not?]

Why do we doubt this will work?

Bitter experience Giles.

Some are great, out of a Billion candidates some Indians are genius.Most of those are either in the US or UK on Visa's working for companies like Microsoft.

However we are talking about outsourcing here, they will select the best at making them money, that won't mean the best technically or at solving customer problems. They will however be the best at pushing back to the customer and charging for variations.

[David Hicks]

Anyone that's worked with them

Not that the individuals are necessarily stupid, or terrible at what they do, but there are systemic problems. I worked with Indian folk in the UK. One of them told me that - "The top flight people, they all go to the US for the money. The rest of the good people come to Europe for a little less money. What's left is, well, what's left."

So they don't have a good starting point there, they do have a cultural bias to agree with anything you say (do you have the skills for that? do you understand what I'm asking?) even if it's not true, there is a language barrier, there is a massive churn of staff and frankly, when looking at the results, you tend to get either nothing at all or just plain crap.

[binky_256]

so you may be trolling here

Microsoft has development centres in India, in Israel, China (from memory), in Australia (security research), and obviously in Redmond. Some development is also done here in Reading.

They're not silly enough to place their bets on any one country.

[Anonymous Coward]

"....Who says IT workers in India are less proficient? ... Microsoft has lots of developers from India..."

I think you just said it yourself.

[The Jase]

Import

Offshored work should be charged an import duty.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm...

I didn't notice the New Lobour ministers complaining when the government appointed new board sent RBS IT jobs offshore, but that board was appointed by them.

[JeffUK]

To be fair, british industry has failed to deliver a working government IT system for quite some time, this way it's probably got a chance of working!

[BristolBachelor]

That's got more to do with the fact that the "spec" will be contradictory, not specify everything and change on a repeated basis. More than likely, the "spec" also doesn't really take everyone into account, so that they will find the system doesn't fit what the users need if it actually gets delivered.

Who is the supplier tends to make little difference, although those who have experienced this kind of crap in the past tend to manage better with the daily change requests and poorly written specs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Err.. no...IBM, Accenture, HP et al have failed to produce workling IT systems for the UK Government...usually using off shored resources.

[Bluenose]

Not a fan of outsourcing

but let's be honest outsourcing is al about getting something for less (not necessarily more) and big business still sees India as a large pool of talent there to be exploited and to be sure there are some very bright people working for some of the companies named. The name of the game is profit and while the Govt is foregoing income tax in respect of the work it is gaining, no health insurance costs due to stress of working 9 hours a day up to 6 days a week for 48 weeks a year.

It will also gain from an increased tax take from the profits of the companies located in the UK who will win from this set up (of course the recent tax cuts in business taxes will probably result in a net zero change to the tax take but think of the bosses bonuses as a result of increased profits).

You can also think about the increase in the share price that will benefit all those who saw their top rate cut to 45% and who invest in companies who off shore.

The only loser here is joe public and unemployed British developers but then again they don't necessarily vote Tory and they can alwasy compete for this work by reducing their day rates to the minimum wage and working longer hours. In fact that is probably one element of the Govt's new resgional pay policy. Won't be long before the Welsh and Northern Ireland will be competing with India on price quickly followed by the North East and West. But the dark horse is the Philipines 'cos they are even cheaper than India but less well educated like much of the UK these days.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not a fan of outsourcing

Accenture is run from in the US, but headquartered in Ireland for tax purposes. They moved their headquarters to Ireland after the IRS started sniffing their previous HQ in Bermuda.

Don't expect too much tax revenue for the UK.

[Roog]

When can we expect to see Parliament outsourced?

[Armando 123]

Parliament was outsourced

To Funkadelic.

During the Clinton administration.

[Thing]

Re: Parliament was outsourced

I want to upvote this twice.

I'm easily amused.

[Oldlag]

I'm with you, lets both outsource and offshore the government.

I do believe that we have the skills and people in the UK to do the job, but feel that the government always gets in the way, changing the goal posts, specs and causing the big projects to fail - How many of us I wonder could have put together a simple NHS database system, for a fraction of the cost and within a short timescale, without government interventions?

Just my two rupees worth...

[Anonymous Coward]

As I said to Chris Grayling in an email three days ago...

I don't know what's more embarrassing; the fact that they've off-shored it to make you look like an idiot, or the fact that they've conned the government into paying for hundreds of people working on it.

Whatever the system is, I could write it in under a year and deliver it, with 8 colleagues of my choosing.

Feel free, if the embarrassment gets too bad, to redirect the 525 million to me, on condition of working. i.e. 1 million pounds down payment, 524 million on delivery.

Half a billion quid for a web based excel spreadsheet. You have to be shitting me. I wrote the whole of xxx (removed because customer's name is their business) xxx for 400 grand.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: As I said to Chris Grayling in an email three days ago...

That's how you deal with MPs/Ministers, call them an idiot in the first sentence, I'm sure his secretary will have read on past there. Possibly he/she even got to the bit where you said that you and a few mates will be able to knock off a £0.5BN project in a year before it was binned.

Either way, your post didn't get to the intended recipient. If you really want to get an MP/Minister to read a mail, send a letter, make it polite, don't brag about how you could do it better, don't insult them, certainly don't be sarcastic and definitely don't swear.

[Anonymous Coward]

Threads

Oh dear.

I feel for the UK guys when they have to maintain the sh1te that comes out of India. I'm encouraged by Giles Jones, incredibly typically British name.

But in 12 years of having to deal with code developed in India it is never pleasant. Threading is a joke, systems are always compromised on quality and performance. Our Indian cousins tend to use as many different libraries and frameworks as they can. Not becuase they are the correct frameworks/libraries for the solution being developed, for more important reasons -- their CV. They need to build their CVs quick as they are likely to be moving on to a new job in a few months requiring experience in that framework...

If this project is to be built in India, it will fail. It will never perform as hoped and the chaps back in the UK will likely be the ones carrying the can. Sad.

Anybody started a goverment petition forcing Accenture and IBM (and others, ATOS??) to build this stuff in the UK that I can sign yet?

[mark phoenix]

Government work MUST be done by UK citizens only

As one person pointed out earlier we should be like the US. Government work can ONLY be done by UK citizens.

The Income stays in the UK.

The employment rate goes up

Taxes come down

People being trained goes up.

This rule should be non negotiable.

[Fred M]

The same thing happened at RBS after it was rescued and hence mostly government owned. Work moved to India. Lots of IT redundancies.

Everyone who's seen Indian outsourcing in action can guess what happened next. Quality went down the pan. Costs actually went up after initially looking like they were lower. Total screw up.

This will be a monumental disaster. And that's BEFORE considering any privacy issues.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget...

Don't forget though that Stephen Hester will almost certainly be leaving RBS after he "turns it round" and the mess of the India Development Centre will be for the next guy to deal with.

Say what you like about Fred Goodwin, but he never offshored (although did buy some companies who had), he stopped NatWest's off shoring and stayed with the company sufficiently long that he saw what happened because of these policies. (ABN Purchase aside!)

[b166er]

Well that's preposterous.

We pay our taxes, in part to fund the work of our civil servants and they then outsource those taxes. What a fucked up financial situation this country's in.

I know, let's haemorrhage cash abroad in every conceivable way and see what happens, guess what? We're skint.

What's the exit plan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Source Code

Who will be checking the source code that that the off-shore developers create?

Will it be checked for "extra features" that pay more than it should under certain criteria when family members move to the UK?

[Richard 120]

Re: Source Code

I was thinking the same thing, this development should surely be restricted at least, the code should be protected and developed in a controlled environment within this countries boundaries by cleared personnel.

Big brother should be watching this, but they seem more concerned with intruding on civil liberties.

[Anonymous Coward]

Prediction

The govmint will spend 1 billion on this project. The indians will burn through this money and deliver something snail-fast and bug-ridden. In addition, it will do business in new, not yet known ways.

Then five british developers will be given six months to stitch together an "emergency solution" for a million or so. That will actually do the job and continue to be developed for the next thirty years.

[Kubla Cant]

Waste it here

As 75% of government IT expenditure is wasted, would it be unreasonable to ask them to waste it in the country where they collect it?

[Armando 123]

Dear El Reg Editors

We really need that Yes (Prime) Minister avatar.

[HP Cynic]

Based on HP's experience all the "Best Shore" work will have to be redone by UK staff anyway so the net cost actually goes up.

Despite the talk of security and UK jobs etc the real issue we had at HP was that the work coming back was crap, if they did it at all (there were examples of test materials being entirely faked).

Of course nobody was allowed to say this at the time as "Best Shore has to be seen as a success".

[Tom Melly]

Just pretend it's foreign aid...

... because otherwise it makes no sense at all.

You could pay twice as much to have it developed in the UK and it would still make sense not to off-shore. Not only is this tax revenue leaving the country rather than being spent back into the economy, but you've also just increased the unemployment figures...

This is like using your petrol to fuel someone else's car on the basis that they get better MPG than you... (I admit that this fails to include the possibility that we might get some decent software at the end of it, but then how likely is that?)

[Emj]

Rock and a hard place - keep it in the UK and the likes of Crapita and HP will screw it up, raise the cost, etc or offshore it for much cheaper and run the just as high risk of having it cocking up somewhere down the line when gov realises they didn't work out the specifications properly. Either way, most gov IT projects fail anyway so at least offshoring it doesn't cost as much in the long run.

[Melanie Winiger]

Indeed

@David Hicks I don't know you, but we've had the same conversation with Indian colleagues:

"The top flight people, they all go to the US for the money. The rest of the good people come to Europe for a little less money. What's left is, well, what's left."

I've been lucky, even I would say privileged to work with some excellent Indian programmers.

The caveat: NONE of them still live in India.

We're talking Singapore and Switzerland if you are interested...

[Armando 123]

Deja vu

Thought this sounded familiar.

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1022_3-5111987.html?tag=nefd_top

[Anonymous Coward]

And when a computer finally passes the Turing test,....

where do you think those india jobs will be outsourced to?

New technology is only scarey to those who aren't making money selling it. I'm off to learn robotics so I can make money of labour-savings devices, ie. robots.

[Milo Tsukroff]

MAKES PERFECT SENSE to me!

Makes perfect sense to me! The system will track UNEMPLOYED people. Why would they hire people and thus REDUCE their service population? Off-shoring the work preserves and expands the base of UNEMPLOYED people the system serves. 'Nuff said. (Where's that icon for LMAO?)