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Legislators move to keep government-funded jobs local

Foreign outsourcing of taxpayer-funded mapping projects may get harder in Minnesota if a House provision gets approved.

By DAVID SHAFFER, Star Tribune

Last update: May 7, 2009 - 9:51 PM

Minnesota legislators, concerned about government-funded jobs being outsourced to India, are proposing restrictions to prevent that from happening on a $5 million digital mapping project.

The provision, added to a House bill, stems from the disclosure that a Wisconsin company won a bid last year for a southeast Minnesota mapping project and then paid technicians in India to do much of the work -- after laying off 30 U.S. employees, including 10 in Maple Grove.

Under the proposed restriction, state officials who oversee the next mapping project would have to report to two legislative committees 30 days in advance of signing any contract for work outside of the United States. Their report would have to show that an offshore contract is the best value and that the security of the data is protected.

Rep. Rick Hansen, DFL-South St. Paul, who had been critical of the outsourcing, said he inserted the provision into the bill to encourage the work to remain in the state. The provision is not in the Senate version of the bill, however.

Tim Loesch, who oversees such projects for the state Department of Natural Resources, said the provision wouldn't ban offshore technical work, but "I don't think there is going to be a vendor who is going to submit a bid with any out-of-country resources in it."

Loesch said a Star Tribune report last month about foreign outsourcing of the Minnesota project got the attention of the mapping industry. "It rippled beyond Aero-Metric," the Sheboygan, Wis., company that won the southeast Minnesota contract, he said.

In the proposed mapping project, aircraft with laser-based sensors would fly over at least 41 counties, recording elevations. Much of the remaining technical work, using computers, could be done anywhere.

The highly accurate elevation maps are used to predict where runoff and erosion dump sediment into rivers, to reveal drained wetlands and to identify lowlands with a flood risk.

David Shaffer • 612-673-7090

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