The University of California is eliminating IT jobs at its San Francisco campus as part of a plan to move work to India, reports Computerworld.
Here are five things to know about this layoff.
1. UCSF, which runs professional schools in dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy, along with a medical center, has 565 employees in its centralized IT department, according to the article. Seventeen percent of UCSF's total IT staff will be affected by the layoff.
2. UCSF employees affected by the layoff include 49 IT permanent employees, along with 12 contract employees and 18 vendor contractors, according to the article. The university said 18 vacant IT positions also won't be filled.
3. The layoff is planned for the end of February. Before that happens, though, the affected IT employees expect to train foreign replacements from India-based IT services firm HCL, according to the article. HCL is working under a university contract valued at $50 million over five years.
4. In discussing the layoff, Joe Bengfort, CIO for the UCSF campus, cited UCSF's "difficult circumstances" due to declining reimbursement and the impact of the Affordable Care Act. He told Computerworld that over the past five years, IT has moved from being responsible for 3 percent of operating expenses to 6 percent.
5. As part of HCL's university contract, the firm will provide data center monitoring and operations, server, storage, database and middleware, as well as network operations, routers, unified communications and application development augmentation services, among an array of other offerings, according to the university. Mr. Bengfort told Computerworld its efforts are focused more on the data and analytics than on the operation of the data center and network.