Reader Jim Jensen responds to David Berlind's article, "Outsourcing and the war on complexity"

I've worked in computing since the middle 1960s, so I've enjoyed watching the pendulum swing back and forth in the debate whether to develop custom business solutions or to acquire standardized (COTS) software packages.

I gather that "complexity" in applications is thought to be bad because it implies lengthy and expensive development, costly and unresponsive maintenance, unreliability, and high consumption of hardware resources--exactly the set of issues that plague Microsoft software, by the way.

However, it seems to me that another aspect of software complexity is diversity, which can be visualized as the absence of rigid standardization and monolithic source of supply. Diversity can be beneficial by enabling adaptability and robustness. What happens to the United Nations Development Programme if PeopleSoft or Unisys go belly up, or--perhaps more likely--decide that supporting institutions like the UNDP is unprofitable? Governmental institutions make notoriously difficult customers for IT companies due to the institutions' lumbering, politics-driven decision making and budgeting processes. I think it would be obvious that whatever limitations exist in the UNDP's agility in executing its mission have little directly to do with IT issues.

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I suspect that the complexity argument is often a cover for defending shopping the world market for IT talent--with the primary effect of rising unemployment among non-management U.S. IT professionals. Since success or failure (measured by the absence of "complexity" and its attributes) reflect mainly on IT management and the its corporate sponsorship, rather than on analysts and programmers, why not outsource IT management and its executive clientele instead?

Recently, Carly Fiorina defended Hewlett-Packard's international outsourcing of IT talent, claiming a shortage of domestic talent, and urging the government to "do more" to increase IT education in schools. This argument appeared at time when it is obvious to everyone that IT unemployment has been on the rise since 1999--which is hardly an incentive for students to train in IT disciplines.

My response to Carly and UNDP CIO Sanders is that it would probably be more beneficial to our domestic economy to outsource corporate CIOs, CTOs, and CEOs. It should be easy to find replacements for these people in the international marketplace who have higher ethical standards, who are more competent, and who will work for a heck of a lot less money.

Jim Jensen