At a time when the world’s biggest IT market — the US — is evaluating protectionist measures against offshoring of IT jobs,Indian companies such as TCS, Infosys and Wipro are preparing to bid for around $2-3 billion outsourcing contracts being fleshed out by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), the HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and the ministry of justice in the UK.
The UK’s state-owned departments are seeking help from the Indian offshoring industry for putting troubled government technology systems back on track and lower the cost of managing IT systems by 25-40%, experts told ET last week. The UK government’s IT spending is estimated to be over $36 billion every year, TowerGroup Europe research director Bob McDowall told ET in an interview.
Apart from the troubled National Health Services (NHS) modernisation programme, which needs restructuring, HMRC will also seek to outsource more work, as the department plans to make it mandatory for firms employing more than 50 employees to file tax-related and other informations online by 2011.
“The UK government’s IT projects almost always suffer from scope creep, financial and time overrun of a significant dimension,” said Mr McDowall. One of the reasons for the UK’s government departments to look for help is the scarcity of competent professionals for transforming the systems.
“Internal IT development resources are not of the strongest quality. Good people go to commercial organisations. Those that are outsourced to the UK-based providers are not always delivered on a more efficient, timely and cost-effective basis,” he added.
The UK’s national healthcare modernisation programme, pegged at around $9.6 billion, is among some of the initiatives that failed to deliver. India’s biggest software exporter TCS has also been involved with the NHS project for the past few years.
The NHS project, which had over half a dozen suppliers, including BT, Accenture, TCS, CSC and Atos Origin, ran into trouble after an inquiry by the audit department revealed that the programme was running over two years behind schedule, and had run into several coordination bottlenecks between vendors and various departments.
“Some projects, including a current health sector project to establish a dynamic health record service for all individual registered with the UK National health service, have suffered significant criticism from the UK National Audit body,” said Mr McDowall.
The UK’s state-owned departments are seeking help from the Indian offshoring industry for putting troubled government technology systems back on track and lower the cost of managing IT systems by 25-40%, experts told ET last week. The UK government’s IT spending is estimated to be over $36 billion every year, TowerGroup Europe research director Bob McDowall told ET in an interview.
Apart from the troubled National Health Services (NHS) modernisation programme, which needs restructuring, HMRC will also seek to outsource more work, as the department plans to make it mandatory for firms employing more than 50 employees to file tax-related and other informations online by 2011.
“The UK government’s IT projects almost always suffer from scope creep, financial and time overrun of a significant dimension,” said Mr McDowall. One of the reasons for the UK’s government departments to look for help is the scarcity of competent professionals for transforming the systems.
“Internal IT development resources are not of the strongest quality. Good people go to commercial organisations. Those that are outsourced to the UK-based providers are not always delivered on a more efficient, timely and cost-effective basis,” he added.
The UK’s national healthcare modernisation programme, pegged at around $9.6 billion, is among some of the initiatives that failed to deliver. India’s biggest software exporter TCS has also been involved with the NHS project for the past few years.
The NHS project, which had over half a dozen suppliers, including BT, Accenture, TCS, CSC and Atos Origin, ran into trouble after an inquiry by the audit department revealed that the programme was running over two years behind schedule, and had run into several coordination bottlenecks between vendors and various departments.
“Some projects, including a current health sector project to establish a dynamic health record service for all individual registered with the UK National health service, have suffered significant criticism from the UK National Audit body,” said Mr McDowall.
Article Source:http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Infotech/IT-cos-eye-3-billion-UK-outsourcing-deals/articleshow/4198103.cms
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