[Reader-list] thread on australian IT list about India

[geert lovink]

(this thread comes from a rather dry but lively IT list in australia called
link. dfat stands for the department for foreign afairs and trade. /geert)

Shift to India and save: DFAT
Selina Mitchell
December 04, 2001
The Australian
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,3370706%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,
00.html

The government department was encouraging firms to shift their information
technology work to low wage countries to the detriment of Australian
workers, the IT Workers Alliance said. But a spokeswoman for Foreign
Affairs and Trade said the report had been misrepresented, and that it
recommended building synergies between Australia and India.

The agency report on trade and investment opportunities with India said
significant opportunties existed for Australian firms to enhance their
competitiveness through "direct investment in and outsourcing to the Indian
IT sector".

... etc

--
In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into
use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather
which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it
mushy.
-- Mark Twain

Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Sydney Australia
brd at austarmetro.com.au

---

From: "Anthony Healy" <thealy at magna.com.au>
To: "Bernard Robertson-Dunn" <brd at austarmetro.com.au>; "Link"
<link at www.anu.edu.au>
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2001 12:56 PM
Subject: RE: [LINK] Shift to India and save: DFAT

http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,3370706%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,
00.html

This is an extraordinary position for a pro-business government. What do
they think software developers are? I don't see DFAT encouraging Australian
business to use cheap Indian lawyers and cheap Indian accountants.

I encourage all software developers and others interested in national
innovation to look up their local state and federal MP's and give them hell
about this stupidity.

Regards, Tony Healy
Advocate for Australian Software Industry Excellence

---

Hi Anthony

On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, Anthony Healy wrote:

>
> >
>
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,3370706%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,
> 00.html
>
>
> This is an extraordinary position for a pro-business government. What do
> they think software developers are? I don't see DFAT encouraging
Australian
> business to use cheap Indian lawyers and cheap Indian accountants.

This is not to be unexpected given that this lot doesn't have a third term
agenda.  So, not only are they not for IT developers as workers, but they
can't even whip up some encouragement for IT developers as business.  I
agree with you. How extraordinary!

> I encourage all software developers and others interested in national
> innovation to look up their local state and federal MP's and give them
hell
> about this stupidity.

There seems to be a lot of this new commodity called stupidity about.  I
just get this awful feeling that telling someone how studid they are is
going to help - I just wish I was wrong.



Rob...
Robert Hazeltine                      Phone:  +61(2) 4736 0218
Senior Analyst/Programmer             Email:  r.hazeltine at uws.edu.au
University of Western Sydney          http://www.uws.edu.au/

---

From: "Anthony Healy" <thealy at magna.com.au>
To: "Link" <link at www.anu.edu.au>
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2001 2:03 PM
Subject: RE: [LINK] Shift to India and save: DFAT

Australian politicians ( all of them, by the way) needs to understand that
software development is a BUSINESS, not something their teenage kids do.

If you look at American government, you see former engineers, military
officers with deep exposure to technology and even, of course, former
astronauts. Australian government, on the other hand, is riddled by
technology illiterates. This applies to all the parties.

As I write this, Bob Carr, NSW Premier, is on radio slamming the DFAT
report.

Regards, Tony Healy
Advocate for Australian Software Industry Excellence

----

From: "Fitzsimmons, Caitlin" <fitzsimmonsc at theaustralian.com.au>
To: "Link" <link at www.anu.edu.au>
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2001 2:56 PM
Subject: RE: [LINK] Shift to India and save: DFAT

I have a lot of friends in the software development industry and the word on
the street is that many of these Indian IT shops produce very shoddy work. I
know someone who has been implementing Indian software at a large financial
institution and he's had to rewrite most of it himself in order to get it to
run.

---

From: "Rick Welykochy" <rick at praxis.com.au>
To: "Bernard Robertson-Dunn" <brd at austarmetro.com.au>
Cc: "Link" <link at www.anu.edu.au>
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2001 3:47 PM
Subject: Re: [LINK] Shift to India and save: DFAT

Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:

> Shift to India and save: DFAT
>
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,3370706%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,
00.html
>
> The government department was encouraging firms to shift their information
> technology work to low wage countries to the detriment of Australian
> workers, the IT Workers Alliance said. But a spokeswoman for Foreign
> Affairs and Trade said the report had been misrepresented, and that it
> recommended building synergies between Australia and India.

Here is another way gummint depts can save $MILLIONS: follow the lead of
the Euro-mob and start using open source software. I imagine this country
is spending $MILLIONs on software licences at all three levels of gummint.

Regarding the Indian suggestion: it plain sucks. Nothing against Indian
or other foreign software developers, but software development in Aus is
an industry unto its own right. The outrage concerning the above idiocy
is rightfully growing exponentially.

-rickw

---

From: "Chirgwin, Richard" <Richard.Chirgwin at informa.com.au>
To: "Link" <link at www.anu.edu.au>
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2001 4:48 PM
Subject: RE: [LINK] Shift to India and save: DFAT

>Australian politicians ( all of them, by the way) needs to understand that
>software development is a BUSINESS, not something their teenage kids do.

Yep. It's also imperative that we teach them that "software" isn't just
something you lump in under services. For a long time, there was no standard
industry code for "software". I suspect this is still the case but will take
correction ...

Our largest software names are middling-sized compared with US software
companies, which actually isn't too bad. I haven't made the comparison to
European software vendors, but the view of Europe is skewed by S.A.P.

For those who resent .au not having big software companies, a couple of
details:

IBM's VisualAge for Java is written by a small company called OTI.
Most corporate e-mail systems, for a long time, used a message transfer
agent from a tiny UK company called DCL.

Etc. I'd like to see policy settings that made it feasible for lots of small
companies to survive and thrive, rather than complaining that we have no big
big big software vendors. For those who rabbit on about "economies of scale"
I'd point out that software development often suffers an inverse economy of
scale; and that our "housing-led recoveries" rest on a great many more small
builders than big ones.

Richard Chirgwin

---

From: "Glen Turner" <glen.turner at aarnet.edu.au>
To: "Link" <link at www.anu.edu.au>
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2001 5:01 PM
Subject: Re: [LINK] Shift to India and save: DFAT

Rick Welykochy wrote:

> Here is another way gummint depts can save $MILLIONS: follow the lead of
> the Euro-mob and start ...

... outsourcing their parliament, judiciary and bureaucracy
to a supra-national government.

[ Well that's how I scanned the sentence the first time I read it :-) ]