The ‘offshoring’ debate…

… is really hotting up in the US, as skilled workers (e.g. programmers) who once thought themselves indispensable are now discovering that that their employers have discovered real (and cheaper) alternatives overseas. I’ve come across an interesting post from John Robb’s weblog on the scope of the problem:

“Here isan article in the McKinsey Quarterly (via Forbes):  By McKinsey estimates, in 2002 it was worth $32 billion to $35 billion–just 1% of the $3 trillion worth of business functions that could be performed remotely. Because of the significant benefits already being realized through offshoring, the market is projected to grow by 30% to 40% percent annually over the next five years. This prospect may cause consternation over job losses in the United States but it will make offshoring an industry with well over $100 billion in annual revenue by 2008. 

What is $100 b of offshored services worth in terms of jobs?  First, an offshored service costs ~50% of the service produced in the US (on average).  Since this is basically a pure salary play (infrastructure is minimal), these estimates mean that 2 m ($100k) information workers will be offshored by 2008.  Also, given these jobs usually produce upwards of ~4 additional jobs per position (community impact), this is a net loss of 10 m jobs by 2008.”

More Hutton fallout

Two interesting articles today. A terrific polemic by Max Hastings, former editor of the Daily Telegraph and the Evening Standard, and not one of nature’s left-wingers. Here’s part of what he has to say:

The longer I think about Hutton, the angrier I get. It is hard to dissent from his conclusions about the BBC’s failures. Yet the damage done by his grotesquely lopsided report vastly outweighs the gravity of the offence. The corporation, guilty of lapses of journalistic judgment, has been treated as if its reporter had committed perjury in a court of law. Lord Hutton seems to expect from working journalists the standards of proof he would demand from witnesses on oath.

Lord Hutton seems unable to grasp a simple truth: all journalism is conducted against a background of official obfuscation and deceit, which does much to explain our blunders and omissions. It seems remarkable not how much journalists get wrong – a great deal – but that we are able to retrieve from the Whitehall swamp fragments of truth, and to present the waterlogged and bedraggled exhibits to readers and listeners.

I say this with regret. I am more instinctively supportive of institutions, less iconoclastic, than most of the people who write for the Guardian, never mind read it. I am a small “c” conservative, who started out as a newspaper editor 18 years ago much influenced by a remark Robin Day once made to me: “Even when I am giving politicians a hard time on camera,” he said, “I try to remember that they are trying to do something very difficult – govern the country.”

Yet over the years that followed, I came to believe that for working journalists the late Nicholas Tomalin’s words, offered before I took off for Vietnam for the first time back in 1970, are more relevant: “they lie”, he said. “Never forget that they lie, they lie, they lie.”

The strangest thing about Hutton’s mindset, as Max observes, is his quaint idea of how political journalism is conducted in the UK. His model seems to be this: the journalist asks the government spokesman a question; the spokesman answers; the journalist writes down the answer; and the newspaper prints it. The idea that an official source might not be truthful never crosses old Hutton’s mind. Hastings goes on to cite two cases where prominent (named) New Labour politicians told him outright lies. And, in another interesting article, lawyer Anthony Lester ponders the implications of Hutton’s proposed code of conduct for the media. Quote:

“The report found David Kelly guilty of acting in breach of the civil service code in talking to Gilligan without authority. It did not consider whether Kelly might have had a public interest Spycatcher defence as a whistleblower. Hutton stated, as a general principle, that ‘accusations of fact impugning the integrity of others, including politicians, should not be made by the media’, without referring to the dangers inherent in self-censorship and prior restraint, or to the constitutional right to free speech now protected by the Human Rights Act against unnecessary interference or restriction – especially on matters of political expression. The report does not consider (as a libel jury would have done) whether, despite sloppy journalism, weak editorial supervision and poor management, it was still in the public interest for the BBC to broadcast the fact that a senior and well-informed public officer had made serious accusations about the way in which the dossier had been compiled.

Those newspapers that have gleefully attacked the BBC should consider the dangers to them and their readers of acquiescing in this approach. As for the BBC, we must hope that its new chairman and director general will be chosen without government influence, that the systemic failures will be corrected but not over-corrected, and that the public’s right to know will not be chilled by self-censorship or government interference as a result of the extraordinary and costly procedure that the government invented to vindicate its reputation.”

Ryanair loses it

It’s not often that one can spot the exact moment when a company blows it, but this week we saw it with Ryanair, the Irish budget airline that has hitherto been the apple of every traveller’s eye. It’s just lost a case brought against it by a disabled traveller who was charged an extortionate fee for the use of a wheelchair. According to the BBC report, “Bob Ross said it was discriminatory to be charged an £18 fee because he was unable to walk to the check-in desk. [Mr Ross has had cerebral palsy since birth and later developed arthritis, so walking is very painful.]

Judge Crawford Lindsay QC ruled Ryanair acted unlawfully by not ensuring a free wheelchair was provided.

The community worker was awarded £1,336 in compensation.”

And guess what Ryanair does next? Claps a 50p levy on every passenger from now on. This will yield about £12 million a year — enough to buy 24,000 wheelchairs by my calculations. It’s a spiteful, vindictive response which will damage the passenger-friendly image of the airline and cost far more in public relations terms than any money it will bring in. Ryanair’s bosses are clearly getting rattled — they had to issue their first profits warning this week after years of spectacular growth. And shares dropped 30% in a week.

A new kind of email server — the 50cc Honda motorcycle

Fascinating article in the NYT and IHT about an ingenious way of getting email to and from places with no internet connections. Extract:

“Without wires for electricity or telephones, O Siengle, a village of about 800 people, has nevertheless joined the online world, taking part in a development project set up by an American benefactor to connect 13 rural schools to the Internet.

Since the system went into place in September at the new elementary school here in Cambodia’s remote northeast corner, solar panels have been powering three computers.

Once a day, an Internet “Motoman” rides a red motorcycle slowly past the school. On the passenger seat is a gray metal box with a short fat antenna. The box holds a wireless Wi-Fi chip set that allows the exchange of e-mail between the box and computers. Briefly, this schoolyard of tree stumps and a hand-cranked water well becomes an Internet hot spot.

It is a digital pony express: Five Motomen ride their routes five days a week, downloading and uploading e-mail. The system, developed by First Mile Solutions, based in Boston, uses a receiver box powered by the motorcycle’s battery. The driver need only roll slowly past the school to download all the village’s outgoing e-mail and deliver incoming e-mail. Newly collected information is stored for the day in a computer strapped to the back of the motorcycle. At dusk, the motorcycles converge on the provincial capital, Ban Lung, where an advanced school is equipped with a satellite dish, allowing a bulk e-mail exchange with the outside world…”

Public service standards in journalism

One of the most striking aspects of the post-Hutton furore is the astonishingly comprehensive and objective way BBC journalists have covered the traumas of their own organisation. It’s deeply impressive. And it contrasts vividly with how most ‘commercial’ news organisations perform when their organisations are in trouble or in the news. Can you imagine, for example, any branch of the Murdoch media giving extensive and detached coverage of the Digger’s divorce, or of troubles within the BSkyB fold?

And even the ‘liberal’ media are not immune. I’ve written for the Observer since 1972 and have seen the paper go through a series of owners. The most shameful memories I have are of what happened to the paper when it was owned by Lonhro, a conglomerate with extensive commercial interests in Africa, led by a Chairman who enjoyed warm personal relationships with most of Africa’s more corrupt dictators. During that time, I watched a liberal newspaper turn a blind eye to all kinds of shady goings-on in Africa. And it was out of the question for its journalists to report frankly on Lonhro’s dealings; indeed, one who tried was actually fired, if I remember correctly. It got so bad that whenever unpalatable compromises with the truth were about to be made, the Editor would say “It’s rat-sandwich time, chaps”. Mercifully, in time the nightmare passed and the paper was bought by the Guardian, so the two papers are now owned by a non-commercial trust. But every time I look at or listen to a BBC news bulletin at present, I am impressed. This is what public-service broadcasting is for.

Doc Searls’s reflections on the New Hampshire Primary result

I like Doc and have been reading him for years. Here’s a extract from his thoughts about the troubles of Dean and the rise of Kerry:

“Meanwhile, there’s the matter of … the constitutional crisis that should have happened after the last election, but didn’t. Big Media would rather forget about it, but the voters won’t let them.

I was delivered that realization last night when I talked on the phone with another friend. She’s a republican, a historian and an astute political observer. She reads a lot of blogs, but she also watches a lot of TV. After telling me that ABC pretty much “apologized” for tendentious reporting of the “Dean Scream” (I just saw Diane Sawyer do a huge mea culpa on Good Morning America, offering excerpts of the same from CNN and Fox… no useful links on the ABC News site, of course) she offered something of a Unified Field Theory that explained everything from ABC’s apology to Joe Trippi’s resignation to the unexpectedly large support for Kerry by voters primary states who favored Dean in the polls only a few weeks ago….

This is a recall election, she said. Dean isn’t the angry one. If you want anger, look to the voters. There is an enormous resolve out there to recall George W. Bush. As we’ve seen in California, the country likes the straight burboun of direct democracy. The representative system failed in the last presidential election. Regardless of who won, the process was an ugly and unfair mess. Now voters see a barely-elected president with delusions of empire, preparing to keep the country in perpetual war, spending trillions in money the government doesn’t have… Meanwhile the country appears headed toward a one-party state, thanks in large part to gerrymandering that deeply perverts the very principles of representative democracy. A second term for Bush will also guarantee a republican Supreme Court as well.

With all that writing on the wall, neither the voters nor the democratic machine cares as much about who started the recall as they do about the recall itself — just like we saw here in California, where the recall started by Ron Unz was finished by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

This indeed makes the primaries a referendum on electability. These voters are realists. Some of them use the Net, but all of them watch TV. If the TV wants to put Kerry in the ring, then Kerry’s the man, for better or worse.

If the counter-revolution will be televised, these voters say, then the revolution will be televised too. The job now is to get Kerry in condition.   Anyway, I kinda nodded along with all of this. It made sense to me. But the Net is still there, connecting voters in more ways than ever. And connecting governance as well.   The Net is the people’s medium. It’s where understanding is produced as well as consumed. In the long run the Net, and the people who use it best, will win.   I just hope I live to see it.”

Joe Trippi bows out

Joe Trippi, enraged by Howard Dean’s recruitment of a Washington insider as CEO of his campaign, has resigned. In his place I’d have done the same. Watch Dean go downhill from now on. Nice ironic comment from Larry Lessig:

“From today’s NYT: You’re going to see a leaner, meaner organization,’ Dr. Dean, who has asked his 500 staff members to skip their paychecks for two weeks, told reporters on an 8 p.m. conference call. ‘We had really geared up for what we thought was going to be a front runner’s campaign. It’s not going to be a front-runner’s campaign. It’s going to be a long war of attrition. What we need is decision making that’s centralized.’

Yes, centralized. Fire someone who built the most extraordinary grass-roots organization in history, and hire a Washington lobbyist in his stead. Now we’re making progress…”

Hutton fallout…

Events move ahead of my predictions yesterday. BBC Director-General Greg Dyke has resigned. Better than waiting to be sacked, I suppose. It’s going to be like 1987 all over again.

Hutton’s defects, contd.

Terrific piece by Jonathan Freedland in today’s Guardian. Extract:

“For one thing, Lord Hutton seemed to have turned a deaf ear to crucial facts and testimony. Transcripts of interviews that the BBC Newsnight journalist Susan Watts had recorded with Dr Kelly corroborated much of what Gilligan claimed, not least the scientist’s statement that the 45-minute claim was “got out of all proportion”. But Lord Hutton appears to have put those transcripts out of his mind, preferring to assume that Dr Kelly could not have said what Gilligan claimed he had.

The judge further chose to believe there was no “underhand strategy” to name Dr Kelly, gliding over Mr Campbell’s diary entries in which he confessed his desperation to get the scientist’s name out. Lord Hutton concluded there was no leaking, even though newspaper reports from last summer show someone must have been pointing reporters very directly towards Dr Kelly.

He ruled there had been no meddling with the substance of the September dossier, just some beefing up of language, even though one expert witness, Dr Brian Jones, testified that, when it comes to intelligence, wording is substance.

On each element of the case before him, Lord Hutton gave the government the benefit of the doubt, opting for the interpretation that most favoured it, never countenancing the gloss that might benefit the BBC. Perhaps the clearest example was Lord Hutton’s very judge-like deconstruction of the “slang expression” sexed up. One meaning could be inserting items that are untrue, he said; another could simply be strengthening language. Under the latter definition, Hutton conceded, Gilligan’s story would be true. So his lordship decided the other meaning must apply….”

Obsessional notes

I love Moleskine notebooks — so much so that one of the projects I’m working on insists that we all use them, but this is ridiculous!