Nine months after its launch and several BPO frauds, National Skills Registry (NSR), a voluntary national database of IT/ITES employees, has got only 30 per cent of industry’s total workforce (25,000 employees of 24 firms) registered with it.

NSR, which was set up in January 2006, after a series of frauds came in to light including those by Citibank and MphasiS BFL employees, is aimed at raising the standard of recruitments in the Indian IT industry by regular checks on any misuse of identity by employees. This is the first such registry of its kind in the global IT BPO industry.

Here is how it works: data pertaining to a worker in the infotech industry — from residential address to education to work experience — is being verified personally by background checkers. These verifications, along with the fingerprints of each worker, are being uploaded to the registry in a kind of a white list (rather than a black list).

Though the cold start, Nasscom is upbeat about NSR. “NSR is already bearing good fruits. In fact, by April 2007, all the employees of all the BPO firms in India will join NSR. It will help in securing the information security in a big way,” says Nasscom vice-president Sunil Mehta.

However, industry watchers say that it will take a while before the NSR gives better results. “Most of the firms do conduct a lot of background tests before inducting a person. However, it is very difficult to detect fraudulent ones all the times. Though NSR is in preliminary stages, it would definitely help the entire industry in the long run,” says K Subramanian, GM, Manpower India, who specialises in entry level jobs.

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