Offshoring: Finally Facts vs. Folklore.

The article presents information on the Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) study of the offshoring of software jobs, a large and thorough examination that summarizes current research in the field. The impressive effort is the culmination of work from ACM's Job Migration Task Force led by Moshe Varde and Frank Mayadas with Bill Aspray as editor and main author. 30 volunteers--both computer scientists and social scientists--from eight countries and many disciplines, were included in the committee contributing to this report. A third of ACM's members live outside of North America, and that fraction is likely to grow in the future. Some jobs will be lost, even if a nation as a whole gains from offshoring. New jobs are also being created in information technology, however, they may require new skill sets. The report offers hints at what individuals can do in developed and developing nations either to benefit from offshoring or not be harmed by it. The risks that offshoring may pose to privacy, security and intellectual property are also explored by the report.