Prof. G. ‘Hari’ Harindranath was delighted to to moderate the ITCILO Labour Migration Academy webinar on Digitalisation and Fair Recruitment – Sharing Experiences held on 23 October 2025. This was attended by over 50 practitioners from around the world representing governments, employers, trade unions, and civil society groups. They were joined by three experts who shared national experiences of digitalising fair recruitment processes in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal:
- Neha Choudhary discussed Nepal’s Foreign Employment Information Management System (FEIMS), designed to reduce information asymmetries in the labour migration supply chain by connecting migrant workers, recruiters, employers, and other relevant actors.
- Rahnuma Salam Khan introduced Bangladesh’s Recruitment Agents’ Information Management System (RAIMS), which enhances oversight of recruitment agencies and intermediaries, promoting transparency and accountability.
- Dr. K.V. Swamy (former GM, Overseas Manpower Company of Andhra Pradesh, India) shared his experiences with India’s eMigrate system, which connects and monitors all stakeholders involved in labour migration.
Key insights from the discussion
Key insights from the discussions were:
- Digitalisation can be transformational for fair recruitment. It enables more integrated engagement across stakeholders in the labour migration cycle, improving data collection and analysis, increasing transparency and accountability, reducing migration costs, and offering quicker access to grievance resolution mechanisms.
- However, these benefits cannot be taken for granted. Labour migration recruitment is complex and risk laden. Digital tools alone cannot eliminate exploitation or structural inequities. Successful digitalisation of fair recruitment requires significant groundwork, including:
- A migrant-first approach, aligned with the principle of “nothing about us without us”
- A whole-of-government approach to ensure policy coherence and a data governance approach to match
- Organisational cultural change across stakeholders to enable new ways of working
- Commitment to digital skills development and ensuring accessibility for all migrant workers
- Complementary on-the-ground interventions to ensure inclusion of the most vulnerable, who are often least likely to benefit from digital systems
- Ethical and privacy safeguards that underpin digital systems, ensuring compliance with data protection regulations and safeguarding migrant workers’ rights.
Hari would like to thank the ITCILO for convening this panel, all the participants and staff for their engagement, and particularly Elton Di Tommazi Maciel and Michela Albertazzi for inviting him to moderate the session.
ICT4D Collective 