88Pro Thinking

Its interesting to know World Bank has a blog. Two economists are writing it, and there are some interesting topics covered like the “Brain drain”. There are some free books on this topic for download too.

In my opinion outsourcing can help prevent Brain Drain, at least to some extent. The primary reason why skilled workers migrate is because in developing countries their skills are not rewarded adequately. However outsourcing has enabled industry to pay better salaries, for example in India and Sri Lanka the average IT salary has increased considerably.

The secondary reason may be there aren’t enough challenging jobs for skilled workers. For example, if you take a City planner, who plans and builds cities from group up, I don't think there is much he/she can achieve in a developing country and this is why some of the world best city planners from developing countries have migrated and build cities for developed countries.

However as for ICT industry, Open Source can really stop brain drain since anybody looking for a challenge can contribute to Open source Projects and be recognized for their skills all without having to migrate to a developed country. In this perspective Lanka Software Foundation is doing a great job is containing the brains in Sri Lanka I would say.

posted by 88Pro / Sunday, October 30, 2005