Williams, Hira and Teitelbaum

In the premiere show of Outsourcing Conversations, brought to you by Corante and IT Conversations, we explore the Bush administration policies and a vexing issue that faces technology workers in the US. Offshore outsourcing makes it far less expensive for companies to develop their products. Making it worse is the U.S. Congress and the passage of recent legislation to increase the number of visas for foreign workers, people who can be paid far less than that of a skilled and well-educated US engineer. It gets worse. The increase in foreign visas fuels offshore outsourcing as the workers from these overseas countries come to the US, learn and then return, after absorbing US business processes. They're smart and better able to serve their offshoring clients.

At the center of the outsourcing boom is an advanced telecommunications infrastructure that has fueled a rapid advancement in digital technologies. These are technologies that do not recognize borders. Corporations are exploiting these applications to send more work overseas. But they also offer a ray of hope as e-learning and other technologies can be used to educate and strengthen the skill sets of technology workers whose work has been displaced. At stake, though in all of this, as some view it, is the decline of nations that neglect their prize economic possessions: science and engineering talent.

During the show, we also provide a recap of recent data collected by IEEE-USA, the sponsor for Outsourcing Conversations. A summary of the survey results is available to people who register at www.corante.com/events.

Host:

• Alex Williams, managing director of events, Corante

Speakers:

• Ronil Hira, assistant professor of public policy at Rochester Institute of Technology. Hira is the chair for IEEE-USA Career & Workforce Policy Committee
• Michael S. Teitelbaum, program director, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
• Danny Sullivan, founder, EverSun Software and the author of two blogs: Offshoring Digest and Offshore Outsourcing World
• Chris Currie, manager, product development and marketing, IEEE-USA

This Part 1 of a two-hour discussion. You'll find Part 2 here.

Special thanks to our lead sponsor for this event, IEEE-USA.

Outsourcing Conversations is a co-production of IT Conversations and Corante.