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Data export to India piques UK
Prasun Sonwalkar
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Indian engineers attend to calls from abroad inside a call center in Gurgaon on the outskirts of Indian capital city, New Delhi.
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British
banks and companies outsourcing to India have reportedly been
circumventing laws that ban the export of personal information of
customers out of Britain. Concern is mounting over the increasing
transfer of personal information to India as call centres working
for British companies contact customers in Britain.
According to the Data
Protection Act, such information should be used only in countries
with "adequate legal protection," which effectively means
the European Union and a select list of nations with tough laws and
the enforcement to back them up.
India is not on the
list but financial service firms have been sending this data abroad.
According to Iain
Bourne, strategic policy manager at the Government’s Data
Protection Registry: "Companies have found ways round the law.
They often use a
contractual relationship with the Indian subsidiary or subcontractor
that binds them to act as if the UK’s law was in force. "We
have had few complaints from consumers, so we think that, by and
large, this means it is being handled well."
However, Simon Davies,
director of human rights group Privacy International, is upset and
says that the Data Protection Act was just "a load of holes
strung together".
He told the local
media: "Companies have been secretly shifting data for years
and refusing to talk about it, but the movement of call centres and
data processing to India illustrates the failings of the act with
vicious clarity.
"The further away
from the source of the data it is moved, the more likely it is that
corruption will creep in. To say that no complaints equals no
problems is totally ludicrous."
Prudential, Aviva,
HSBC and Reuters have shifted thousands of jobs to the subcontinent.
HSBC claims it has permission from customers, thanks to a set of
revised conditions it sent to customers in 1998 and 1999. A
spokesman said the data remained on its Britain-based computer
systems. Meanwhile, Barclays bank is set to announce a
groundbreaking agreement with banking union Unifi aimed at
minimising compulsory redundancies
if jobs are transferred to India. The bank says it has no plans to
move jobs abroad, but admits it is looking at the option. Unifi
believes the move is inevitable and estimates that 6,000 jobs at
Barclays could ultimately be affected.
Barclays has promised
to consult Unifi at least six months before any jobs are transferred
overseas. The union has also agreed to a deal that ensures that
Barclays will work only with companies in India that observe human
rights and do not exploit its employees.
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Quality
declining, says survey
There is a
growing sense of ennui among British customers dealing with
Indian call centre workers over poor diction, according to a
recent survey.
The quality
of Indian call centre workers is said to be declining
rapidly as poorly qualified and trained staff is being
deployed to meet demand from Western companies, says the
survey.
British
customers have reported that staff at Indian call centres,
despite "cultural training," do not always
appreciate the nuances of life in British society and have
also experienced difficulty in understanding some staff.
The survey
also reveals that more and more customers are upset at being
forced to talk to operators and call centre staff half way
round the world.
The survey
says nearly 60 per cent of the public said they did not want
call centres to be based abroad. Even more strikingly, nine
out of 10 customers of financial institutions said they
would consider changing companies if their organisation
moved calls offshore.
A
spokeswoman for Transversal, which produces technology for
call centres, said: "In some Indian call centres we are
seeing attrition rates in the region of 30 per cent -
similar rates to those in the UK, but they seem to be
hitting those attrition rates earlier on in their
development." Mike Allen, of call-centre research
specialist Mitial, said: "The customer attitude to this
is absolutely clear - they don’t want it to happen - and
it is being ignored."
The Evening
Standard reported that nearly 160,000 Indians work in call
centres and Deloitte
expects another two million jobs will be created in the
subcontinent within five years.
Allen said:
"We have seen the recruitment of the really high
quality Asian staff tailing off. They are now recruiting
poorer quality applicants - which means they will offer a
poorer service.
"Our research
indicates that there definitely is a diction problem with
Indian call centre staff." |
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Another
scourge — undercutting
After outsourcing
it is undercutting, and India is at the centre of both buzzwords
in the global economy. British companies outsourcing back office
operations to India is no more news. Now local accountants and
lawyers fear an undercutting drive on home soil. Recently, one
British company was quoted as offering £ 1,00,000 to carry out
a software audit. An Indian group offered to do the same job for
£ 30,000.
The work was
carried out by four software professionals coming in from India.
A top Birmingham
business chief has now sounded the alarm over the threat of
cut-price operators snatching work from lawyers and accountants.
David Grove,
president of Birmingham and Solihull Chamber of Commerce,
claimed that many businesses in the sector were ignorant of the
threat they face from India and China.
Grove warned while
many manufacturers had been grappling with the competition from
the two Asian giants for years, many in the service sector
thought, quite wrongly, that they were immune. He said in
Birmingham: "People in this country have got to start
living in the real world. I believe that this issue remains the
biggest real and dangerous threat to competitiveness among
British companies. "If accountants and lawyers and the like
in this country do not act swiftly, their business volumes could
be slashed. "Manufacturing has been suffering from these
cost pressures for years but this is now a serious wake-up call
to the service sector.
"We will soon
be in a position where audits of UK companies can be carried out
in India. The technology is already in place."
According to
Masood Butt of the Institute of Asian Businesses, "a part
of globalisation means that some parts of the world will see job
losses and others will see jobs being created. A highly skilled
and committed workforce will always be a priority for any
business." |
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