New Delhi: Just about 4.9 lakh IT and BPO professionals have been enrolled in the National Skills Registry (NSR), which was created by Nasscom around three years ago to build a credible database of existing and potential employees in the IT sector. This works out to less than a quarter of the overall industry workforce.

"Such large initiatives take time to get operationalised and although the announcement on the NSR was made in early 2006, the initiative was launched around August 2006," a source said to Business Line. Vice-President of Nasscom, Raju Bhatnagar, said that the momentum of NSR has been building up and the last year saw over 2.8 lakh registrations. The majority of these registrations (almost 65 percent) happened in the BPO industry, with IT professionals accounting for the balance. As many as 80 companies have joined the initiative so far

Since January, the database has been extended to include the banking sector also, although the numbers there are still small. If the banking and the IT industry registrations are taken together, the overall sign-ups would stand at about 5.2 lakh. Four banks have already come on board, Bhatnagar said.

The NSR, which aims to address concerns over information security breach and fake resumes, was launched by Nasscom to filter out errant employees, reduce the risk of fraud-related activities and improve recruitment practices in the IT industry. The NSR contains third-party verified personal, qualification-related and career information of IT and BPO professionals, and allows employers to view the verified resumes, after an authorization from the candidates