BPOs to delve into employee database

The Skills Registry, first mooted by Nasscom last year after a 20-year-old web designer Kkaran Bahree was accused of scamming BPOs by The Sun magazine, was inaugurated by IT and telecommunications Minister Dayanidhi Maran. The registry will set up a background database of current and prospective employees of the IT and BPO companies, based on verification by independent agencies empanelled by Nasscom and NSDL.

It is not mandatory for all employees to sign up, but companies that do register with the database will have to commit to getting new employees registered. The database is a sure sign of the dire need for stringent security in the IT sector right at the employment stage.

In fact, in another first for India, biometrics as well as digital signatures will secure the employee database. Records on the database will take fingerprints from both hands of applicants, apart from their names, photographs, qualifications, addresses, contact information and current employment.

Prospective employees may retrieve these records only after permission is given the individual. The permission will be given using digital signatures. Firms can access records of their own employees, but not those of prospective employees. To access records of non-employees, firms will need permission from the individual.

Every registration will cost individuals Rs 50-a-year and Rs 250 as one-time fee. To access each prospective employee8217;s records on the database companies must pay Rs 300, a small sum considering that the industry8217;s losses from security-related concerns of international companies could total 8 billion, going by unofficial estimates.

Already, the big guns have 8216;8216;supported8217;8217; the Nasscom-NSDL initiative. Genpact, TCS, CMC, MphasiS and Satyam are all aboard, meaning that they have committed to ask all future and existing employees to register.