Background and Rationale

Currently, there is a widespread trend among labour inspectorates to adopt new technologies for improved performance and planning of their inspection services. Over the years, the ILO has provided technical support to several countries in the design and development of such systems, particularly electronic case management systems.

From this experience, the ILO has learned that the best systems are those tailored to national regulations, administrative procedures, and inspection workflows. Moreover, the sustainability of these systems depends on clear and budgeted commitments by labour administrations to provide ongoing human and financial support for maintenance and further development, often at significant cost.

Because of this, many countries are not able to develop such systems, owing to the small size and limited resources and technical expertise of their labour inspectorates. Yet even these countries should be able to benefit from more generic, customizable, and cost-effective web-based platforms that the ILO could develop in-house, based on expertise gathered from its previous work.

The plan to design, develop and pilot this technology also emerges from the Future of Work discussions and the ILO’s subsequent commitment to prioritize four initiatives, including an innovation facility on transformative technology for decent work (TT4DW). This initiative is focused on generating and testing digital technology solutions, including electronic case management systems for labour inspectorates.

The development of a project to pilot this technology in the Pacific further builds on ILO efforts in the sub-region to develop a decent work toolbox for Small Island Developing States (SIDS). In so doing, this project will contribute to South-South cooperation through local IT development, exchange of experiences and training, as well as the potential to scale up the use of the platform in other small island states (Caribbean) and beyond.

Objective

The objective of this proposal is for the development of a standardized web-based Electronic Case Management System (ECMS) to enable labour inspectorates with limited resources and expertise to access technology that can assist in case management, reporting, data analytics and inspection planning.

Meeting outcome

Senior labour inspectors from the Samoan Ministry of Commerce Industry & Labour have started discussions on a generic labour inspectors workflow mapping exercise to help build a Electronic Case Management System (ECMS) to support their work on industrial relations, work permits and OHS.