Councils should straight up be banned from subcontracting to foreign businesses.
We see this happen time and time again in IT, and will follow these steps:
1. product is outsourced to save x amount, people in charge get a nice kickback / bonus for saving cash
2. Company outsourcing originally performs well then looks to cut costs by moving staff off shore.
3. Satisfaction drops in the people who depend on the service of the now offshore department. (how many times have we heard IT are useless).
4. Costs actually increase due to increased time to resolution as a result of outsourcing.
5. Department is brought back into the company at a higher cost than just keeping the team as was, overall costs decrease just due to how inefficient offshoring is & those who got a nice kick back originally say “well we learnt some lessons”
6. 10 years pass repeat step 1
You’d think councils would have learnt by now that outsourcing to the private sector is never better value for money.
1. Fuck CGI
2. Fuck CGI
3. Sounds like the same people who refused to sign a CGI contract when the that whole deal went live, and CGI were looking at all ways to cut ties with them or bring them into the company.
4. Fuck CGI
There should be shared IT services that are centrally supported on UK based infrastructure for Councils. It’s not like councils provide unique services based on geographical location.
Yes some services are not delivered by the Local council but a County or Unitary Authority but the fundamentals are the same.
It makes the scale of the service large enough that it’s worth employing UK based workers to be part of it.
You might even attract some of the best talent from the private sector into local government.
Having all that information in one place I would assume helps with central government reporting and tracking the effectiveness of policy decisions and outcomes.
We taught him Wrong as a joke seems like a good plan in this situation lol
I had this situation in a previous role, me and my team made a pact to give the worst possible handover imaginable. We did just this and moved on. Very satisfying.
How many jobs will be outsourced to foreign countries over the next 10 years? If it’s legal, and is currently done by British staff WFH, then how many businesses will consider this sort of outsourcing to save money?
This shit has been going on for 20 years…
Most major IT Support Companies such as CSC, HP, Dell etc started the process of getting staff to train their replacements in India and then making them redundant 20+ years ago.
Due to the technology that is now available the only on site IT staff you need is box monkeys.
However it’s gone far past IT support staff, even highly technical roles such as Software Engineering are being replaced.
Rolls Royce has let go of thousands of British based staff over the last 5 years and replaced them with Indian based suppliers such as TCS and who are bloody awful.
It’s all about short term thinking.
Yeah you will save money in the short term, but long term it ends up costing you significantly more because the work that is being done is inferior and ends up taking much longer
Outsourcing to a bunch of poorly paid people that don’t give a shit rarely goes well.
Can we outsource the senior managers who make these shite decisions? Probably the only time there wouldn’t be a difference in quality, as they’d still be aimless, self-serving and stealing a living.
It should be noted that the demand is so high that the pay for offshore workers is going up in India. We were forced to use the Philippines, That have some good workers too but they also get too expensive.
Btw, all these people are on the other side of the world. Sure they try to work our timezones but you get the younger, less experienced workers. Anything big needs overnight for a resolution.
Then the pay talked about here is crap. Any Indian with experience will move on as soon as they can. How will the KT be managed?
Lastly, personal data can’t be sent offshore without a lot of compliance work.
The council I used to work for set up a private business, then sacked all its support and back-office staff and rehired them into the private business so that it didn’t have to give them Public Sector benefits and wasn’t obliged to pay at NLW – that was IT services, HR, revenues and benefits, customer contact etc.
It’s a growing trend, too. Councils are beginning to do the same to core services like planning and building control, finance departments etc.
I don’t think I’ve called, emailed, or used the live chat of a support service in years that wasn’t outsourced to South Asia.
It’s a serious pain due to the language barrier, especially because they often don’t have a UK-based escalation path.
I wonder if non-English speaking countries (other than maybe France, due to speakers in Africa) have the same issues.
Well I guess they’re getting a raise due to getting a promotion to ‘trainer’ right?
A fairly simple fix to this would be to introduce something similar to the minimum wage requirement for seafarers in our waters. If the work being done is “based” in the UK, then the UK minimum must be paid.
It will require some legislative gymnastics determining the location of performance, but in real terms that wouldnt be too difficult.
Offshoring becomes less attractive, and entities doing it at the expense of UK workers can face fines if their provider is not compliant.
Impressive that the council aren’t subject to sovereignty standards when every other government agency is. So you can grant access to a city infrastructure component to a group of foreign nationals to save money but every other agency can’t even store non-proprietary information in the cloud if it’s non UK based? This doesn’t vibe with NCSC standards and it’s a concerning turn of events.
Ah yes, the “get a temporary outsourced team to build something then chuck it over the wall and forget about it” strategy. I’m sure that will work well for bespoke, critical IT infrastructure.
Companies keep making this same mistake and I don’t understand why. You’d think that this would be common knowledge by now. Glasgow Council will realise this when they get very poor value for money.
Having an in house, permanent team may appear more expensive upfront, but bespoke, continuous problems need a bespoke, permanent team to solve.
Perhaps I’m just a proper arsehole, but I’d see this coming a mile off and purposefully train them wrong just to spite my soon to be former employer
Seems VERY wrong that a UK public body can outsource to different countries. Money really should be spent locally
My previous company got hacked, take a guess how they gained access to our network!
WTf … Forced to train Indian workers to replace their Scottish workers ? This is so early 2000’s and guess what … it’s generally been a disaster.
once you have Indian management ingrained in your Company/organisation they seek to promote the hiring of multitudes of Indians overseas in order to make themselves seem great managers , only a few of the decent ones get brought over but then the same xenophobic attitude continues thereafter – just like the cuckoo bird… the locals get squeezed out. Sadly I reflect upon this from first hand experience – not … racism … look around you and wake up to what’s going on.
Ah the classic cycle. Outsource a service, Realise TUPE will mean you have the same service with the same people for more money, move offshore because that’s “better”, wonder why there’s been no knowledge transfer and everything is on fire… It’ll be back in house or with another provider before long.
24 comments
“They took our jobs!”
Actually yes, they did and do.
Councils should straight up be banned from subcontracting to foreign businesses.
We see this happen time and time again in IT, and will follow these steps:
1. product is outsourced to save x amount, people in charge get a nice kickback / bonus for saving cash
2. Company outsourcing originally performs well then looks to cut costs by moving staff off shore.
3. Satisfaction drops in the people who depend on the service of the now offshore department. (how many times have we heard IT are useless).
4. Costs actually increase due to increased time to resolution as a result of outsourcing.
5. Department is brought back into the company at a higher cost than just keeping the team as was, overall costs decrease just due to how inefficient offshoring is & those who got a nice kick back originally say “well we learnt some lessons”
6. 10 years pass repeat step 1
You’d think councils would have learnt by now that outsourcing to the private sector is never better value for money.
1. Fuck CGI
2. Fuck CGI
3. Sounds like the same people who refused to sign a CGI contract when the that whole deal went live, and CGI were looking at all ways to cut ties with them or bring them into the company.
4. Fuck CGI
There should be shared IT services that are centrally supported on UK based infrastructure for Councils. It’s not like councils provide unique services based on geographical location.
Yes some services are not delivered by the Local council but a County or Unitary Authority but the fundamentals are the same.
It makes the scale of the service large enough that it’s worth employing UK based workers to be part of it.
You might even attract some of the best talent from the private sector into local government.
Having all that information in one place I would assume helps with central government reporting and tracking the effectiveness of policy decisions and outcomes.
We taught him
Wrong as a joke seems like a good plan in this situation lol
I had this situation in a previous role, me and my team made a pact to give the worst possible handover imaginable. We did just this and moved on. Very satisfying.
How many jobs will be outsourced to foreign countries over the next 10 years? If it’s legal, and is currently done by British staff WFH, then how many businesses will consider this sort of outsourcing to save money?
This shit has been going on for 20 years…
Most major IT Support Companies such as CSC, HP, Dell etc started the process of getting staff to train their replacements in India and then making them redundant 20+ years ago.
Due to the technology that is now available the only on site IT staff you need is box monkeys.
However it’s gone far past IT support staff, even highly technical roles such as Software Engineering are being replaced.
Rolls Royce has let go of thousands of British based staff over the last 5 years and replaced them with Indian based suppliers such as TCS and who are bloody awful.
It’s all about short term thinking.
Yeah you will save money in the short term, but long term it ends up costing you significantly more because the work that is being done is inferior and ends up taking much longer
Outsourcing to a bunch of poorly paid people that don’t give a shit rarely goes well.
Can we outsource the senior managers who make these shite decisions? Probably the only time there wouldn’t be a difference in quality, as they’d still be aimless, self-serving and stealing a living.
It should be noted that the demand is so high that the pay for offshore workers is going up in India. We were forced to use the Philippines, That have some good workers too but they also get too expensive.
Btw, all these people are on the other side of the world. Sure they try to work our timezones but you get the younger, less experienced workers. Anything big needs overnight for a resolution.
Then the pay talked about here is crap. Any Indian with experience will move on as soon as they can. How will the KT be managed?
Lastly, personal data can’t be sent offshore without a lot of compliance work.
The council I used to work for set up a private business, then sacked all its support and back-office staff and rehired them into the private business so that it didn’t have to give them Public Sector benefits and wasn’t obliged to pay at NLW – that was IT services, HR, revenues and benefits, customer contact etc.
It’s a growing trend, too. Councils are beginning to do the same to core services like planning and building control, finance departments etc.
I don’t think I’ve called, emailed, or used the live chat of a support service in years that wasn’t outsourced to South Asia.
It’s a serious pain due to the language barrier, especially because they often don’t have a UK-based escalation path.
I wonder if non-English speaking countries (other than maybe France, due to speakers in Africa) have the same issues.
Well I guess they’re getting a raise due to getting a promotion to ‘trainer’ right?
A fairly simple fix to this would be to introduce something similar to the minimum wage requirement for seafarers in our waters. If the work being done is “based” in the UK, then the UK minimum must be paid.
It will require some legislative gymnastics determining the location of performance, but in real terms that wouldnt be too difficult.
Offshoring becomes less attractive, and entities doing it at the expense of UK workers can face fines if their provider is not compliant.
Impressive that the council aren’t subject to sovereignty standards when every other government agency is. So you can grant access to a city infrastructure component to a group of foreign nationals to save money but every other agency can’t even store non-proprietary information in the cloud if it’s non UK based? This doesn’t vibe with NCSC standards and it’s a concerning turn of events.
Ah yes, the “get a temporary outsourced team to build something then chuck it over the wall and forget about it” strategy. I’m sure that will work well for bespoke, critical IT infrastructure.
Companies keep making this same mistake and I don’t understand why. You’d think that this would be common knowledge by now. Glasgow Council will realise this when they get very poor value for money.
Having an in house, permanent team may appear more expensive upfront, but bespoke, continuous problems need a bespoke, permanent team to solve.
Perhaps I’m just a proper arsehole, but I’d see this coming a mile off and purposefully train them wrong just to spite my soon to be former employer
Seems VERY wrong that a UK public body can outsource to different countries.
Money really should be spent locally
My previous company got hacked, take a guess how they gained access to our network!
WTf … Forced to train Indian workers to replace their Scottish workers ? This is so early 2000’s and guess what … it’s generally been a disaster.
once you have Indian management ingrained in your Company/organisation they seek to promote the hiring of multitudes of Indians overseas in order to make themselves seem great managers , only a few of the decent ones get brought over but then the same xenophobic attitude continues thereafter – just like the cuckoo bird… the locals get squeezed out. Sadly I reflect upon this from first hand experience – not … racism … look around you and wake up to what’s going on.
Ah the classic cycle.
Outsource a service, Realise TUPE will mean you have the same service with the same people for more money, move offshore because that’s “better”, wonder why there’s been no knowledge transfer and everything is on fire… It’ll be back in house or with another provider before long.
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