Knowledge Professionals and the Indian KPO Market: Government Initiatives

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To increase India’s value proposition in the global IT/ ITES (IT Enabled Services) space, NASSCOM and the industry have already taken several initiatives to further enhance the availability of and access to suitable talent for IT / ITES, which includes the current potential KPO sector in India. These initiatives include (17):

• MoUs with UGC and AICTE: NASSCOM signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) in 2005, to strengthen professional education (through curricula, faculty, infrastructure, pedagogy improvements) in line with the IT industry’s requirements of demand for skilled professionals.

• University Grants Commission (UGC)
     ° Development Grants for Engineering and Technical Universities – The University Grants Commission has been providing development grants to six technical universities and 27 central / state / deemed-to-be universities having engineering departments for staff, building, equipment and books and journals, etc.
     ° Development Grants for Management Departments in Universities – The Commission provides financial assistance to universities which have management departments, for their development. During the second year of the Tenth Plan, the UGC has released grants amounting to Rs. 1.13 crore to 20 universities having Management Departments.

• National Assessment of Competence: NASSCOM has launched the NASSCOM Assessment of Competence (NAC) program for potential employees in the BPO industry. NAC is an industry standard assessment and certification program that aims to ensure the transformation of a "trainable" workforce into an "employable workforce". In the first phase, the pilot that was launched recently ran for 3 months in 3 cities, namely, NCR, Mumbai and Bangalore.

• National Skills Registry: NASSCOM is working with industry, present and prospective BPO employees and HR consultants to determine the best method to improve retention rates in the industry. NASSCOM, in collaboration with the National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL), has launched the National Skills Registry (NSR) in an attempt to further strengthen security in the Indian IT industry. NSR, a global first, is a centralized database of information about the employee's professional and educational background. The NSR has been specifically designed to ensure authenticity of data through independent verification and biometric identification of the individual.

• Certification Program for Frontline Management: Under the aegis of Nasscom’s Executive Development Program (NEDP), Nasscom and QAI, the leading quality consultancy in India, last year unveiled the first-of-its-kind Certification Program for Frontline Management for the ITES–BPO sector. The program has been launched nationally and was organized in the five major metros, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad, in FY 2005. The program will soon be extended to other cities like Pune, Kolkata, Chandigarh and Jaipur.

• Industry–Academia partnership: Nasscom, in its IT Workforce Development (ITWD) initiative, is also working with academia across the country to encourage and facilitate greater industry interaction, thus helping them in sharing relevant feedback, staying updated on developments in the industry and giving them an opportunity to incorporate positive changes to their curriculum and pedagogy.

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