India's booming information technology and call center industry launched a database for its workforce on Wednesday that it hopes will boost data security after reports of theft surfaced last year.
The sector directly employs a million people, and indirectly about three times that number in jobs ranging widely from transport and security to catering and housekeeping, and vowed last year to better monitor its employees and raise privacy standards.
The database containing personal and work-related information would enable employers to verify a staff member's credentials while police would be able to track the background of workers.
India's call centers were hit in April 2005 by a $400,000 online credit card fraud after workers enticed bank customers to part with personal details.
A month later a British newspaper alleged that a call centre worker illegally sold secret data of British bank customers to an undercover reporter.
The firm denied the charges saying it did not have such data or any clients in the UK. It also dismissed a man suspected to have sold the information gathered while he moonlighted elsewhere.
According to the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) the database is a world first for the IT industry. Its Web address is: www.nationalskillsregistry.in.
A government official, who did not wish to be named, said companies would now be able to track the career backgrounds of employees and help law enforcement agencies tackle data theft.
"Information security is an integral part of the information infrastructure for enhancing India's e-business environment," T.D. Maran, federal minister for communications and information technology, told an industry meeting.
A report by NASSCOM and consultancy firm McKinsey in December forecast India's business services and information technology exports would surge by more than 25 percent a year and reach $60 billion by 2010.
