Home and away
The exportation of jobs overseas is a topic often debated by politicians, but many people don't fear it will happen to them
A big issue in the early stages of last year's US presidential election centred on how to prevent service-based jobs in the US being exported overseas. Apart from the fact that globalisation of trade and jobs is a more effective way to help people living in poor countries than charity, was there any justification in using this as an election tactic in the US?
And should any of the political parties in the UK also turn protectionist to win votes in the general election later this year?
According to the respondents of a recent Quocirca survey, the answer is a resounding, 'No'. Nearly 6,000 people responded to our online survey, and 80 per cent of them said their job could not be outsourced, or was highly unlikely to be outsourced.
Most of the respondents were from the UK: half from end-user organisations and half from within the IT industry; ie, vendors, resellers or integrators. There was little difference between the two groups on this particular question.
Admittedly, about five per cent said their jobs had already gone, or were heading, overseas. However, with low unemployment rates in the UK, there is nothing to suggest they are having difficulty finding another job.
Of course, some jobs can be exported overseas more easily than others. For example, teleworking and software development are far easier to export than, say, nurses and bus drivers.
Nonetheless, there was evidence from our survey that even within these categories of job, respondents did not believe there was a threat of outsourcing. When asked where their organisations' software development was carried out, only five per cent of respondents said it was carried out overseas.
IT industry software development in particular is likely to remain in-house, although it must be accepted that this could include software houses that have an overseas operation. Other Quocirca research shows there is some secondary overseas outsourcing by local integrators that end-user organisations may not be aware of.
About 22 per cent of end-user organisations don't develop their own software, preferring to use off-the-shelf packages. This increases to more than 40 per cent for small businesses with less than 50 employees, which is good for resellers, many of which focus on assembling standard components for their customers.
And assembling standard components is set to become easier with the use of service-oriented architectures (SOA).
SOA makes using standard components, based on web services, easier. These components can be plugged into a business' IT architecture whenever they are required. For example, a payroll system provided over the internet as a hosted service can be integrated easily with an internally developed employee relationship management system, providing both are web service-enabled.
Quocirca's survey shows that the IT industry is ahead of its customers on SOA, which is not surprising. The industry should be leading its customers and, in this case, the customers are starting to follow.
But there is still much cynicism, with nearly 20 per cent of end-user respondents considering SOA to be pie-in-the-sky stuff. However, this does not mean their IT managers are in the same category: they could well be among the near 15 per cent who think it is a direction in which they should head.
Our survey, being self-selecting, does not target IT management in particular. Quocirca plans to re-run the survey at a later date to see if any trends are emerging, and it expects to see increasing acceptance of SOA.
This brings us full-circle. SOA allows the best components to be more easily plugged in to business processes - be they a software application, or a human being on the end of a telephone or sitting in front of a web browser somewhere. If the human being is up to the job, it doesn't matter where they are located.
So if, as Quocirca expects, the acceptance of SOA does increase, the overseas outsourcing of jobs will become even easier. In which case, the issue is unlikely to disappear in time for the next US presidential election in 2008, when the American public will again face the issue of sharing their wealth with poorer countries through the export of service-based jobs.
To see the illustrations associated with this report please click here.
CONTACTS
Bob Tarzey is service director at Quocirca.
Quocirca (01753) 855 794
www.quocirca.com