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Jobs risked in Telecom NZ review?

Telecom New Zealand has this afternoon branded as "factually incorrect" newspaper reports that it plans to offshore up to 1500 jobs, but did say that it was conducting a review on how it could improve its internal IT services.
Written by Darren Greenwood, Contributor

Telecom New Zealand has this afternoon branded as "factually incorrect" newspaper reports that it plans to offshore up to 1500 jobs, but did say that it was conducting a review on how it could improve its internal IT services.

The move follows reports in the Wellington-based Dominion Post that the telco was looking at offshoring work, largely affecting its Gen-i IT services arm.

The Dominion Post said it received "leaked" documents which revealed 400 to 500 jobs would go at the least if Telecom NZ took up proposals presented to it by IT services companies.

The paper also quoted opposition Labour ICT spokesperson Clare Curran as saying she had been told 400 to 1500 jobs could go, which she confirmed to ZDNet.com.au. Curran claimed to have documentation showing that the jobs were threatened.

However, Telecom New Zealand this afternoon said such stories were "factually incorrect".

"The documents discussed in the media relate to a review of how Telecom can improve its internal IT services, a large part of which is already outsourced. The documents are not Telecom documents, but proposals from outsource IT services companies," a spokesperson for Telecom said.

"Seven leading global technology companies have presented proposals which are currently being evaluated by us. The vendors were encouraged to consider new and innovative ways of delivering shared technology services for the internal Telecom needs," the spokesperson told ZDNet.com.au.

"The process is still at a very early stage with initial 'white paper concepts' submitted so it is there are no decisions or plan yet on how the project might evolve."

The spokesperson said a project team is shortlisting a few providers and will source further proposals from them over the coming months.

"Telecom is a long way away from making any decisions about the design and implementation of the project."

The spokesperson also denied that Gen-i was central to the propositions. "None of the submissions received from any of the vendors discussed the involvement of Gen-i staff," they added.

The Dominion Post had said that proposals from supplier Hewlett-Packard, plus others from IBM and India-based Tech Mahindra had canvassed increased offshoring.

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