According to Nasscom, getting a DSCI certificate will ratify that the company has not only obtained international standards, but that it also follows the best practices in these areas. This will give confidence to their customers to outsource more work to these companies.
Promoted by Nasscom, DSCI will work as a not-for-profit organisation and will be registered under Section 25 of the Companies Act. Expected to be launched formally in late July or early August this year, DSCI will work as an independent self-regulatory organisation to promote the standards and frameworks among the Indian IT and BPO companies.
Kamlesh Bajaj who earlier headed the Information Risk Management (IRM) practice at TCS has joined DSCI as the chief executive officer a few days ago. Besides, former telecommunication secretary Shyamal Ghosh has joined the organisation as chairman.
Apart from Nasscom president Som Mittal, the organisation will have one former Nasscom president in the board of directors. DSCI will also have independent directors and one representative from the central government in its board.
To start with, DSCI is coming out with a survey on the best practices being followed by the Indian IT and ITeS companies.
Following this, independent auditors appointed by DSCI will certify what are the best practices being followed by a company seeking to be a member of DSCI which will be the benchmark to obtain a certificate from DSCI.
"We are trying to promote the standards and frameworks among the IT and BPO companies in India. We also want them to become the members of DSCI; because by becoming members of DSCI, it will give them more credibility in the eyes of customers across the globe," Bajaj told Business Standard on the sidelines of the Nasscom-BPO summit in Bangalore.
Nasscom has about 1,200 companies across the country as its members. It is estimated that almost half of them comply with most of the top standards available at the moment. The initial focus of DSCI will be on establishing its credibility first, so that "you cannot afford not to be a member of DSCI," said Ghosh.
Presently, no other country has a self-regulatory organisation to encourage ITTeS companies to follow standards. Bajaj said that once the credibility of DSCI certification is established, the organisation might look for making it mandatory for all Nasscom members to comply to DSCI standards. In future, DSCI is also considering to work as an enforcement agency for the adoption of global standards by Indian IT, BPO companies.
"Our role now will be to encourage the companies to follow the standards. We are not focussing on the enforcement parts, at the moment. Enforcement is something we will come up with much later," he added.
DSCI is planning to launch a joint awareness programme with Nasscom to promote the standards and frameworks across the industry.
