The Regional Labor Modernization Program (RLMP) aims to reform the operations of the labor institutions in Central America by using ICTs as a change agent, transforming the manner in which the labor organization interacts with its constituents and how services are delivered. The great success of ICT modernization efforts with Guatemala's Ministry of Labor (2002-2005) served as the inspiration for designing a regional Central American effort under a support package that forms part of the CAFTA-DR Free Trade Agreement and the IDB's White Book. This institutional modernization module is being developed by USAID under an umbrella Administration of Labor Justice Program.
The RLMP integrates four key components:
- Diagnostic Assessments - these provide an in-depth situational analysis of the institution across four key capacity aspects: Organizational, Financial, Technological, and Human Resource. The analysis also provides a baseline, based on Alexius' ICT Maturity Model that measures the integration of ICTs as part of mission critical elements of operations.
- Strategic Plan Development - these plans showcase the roadmap towards ICT maturity and an integrated enterprise architecture by starting with an analysis of key processes within the organization, their prioritization and then determining improvements that can either be automated by ICTs or not. The consolidated analysis produces a sequencial and prioritized list of projects into a cohesive strategy.
- Key Project Portfolio Implementation - as a product of the strategy, key priority projects are defined. In the case of the Ministries, because of their low levels of ICT maturity, most projects focused on basic infrastructure including networks, training, backoffice deployment, e-gov portals, intranets, and groupware.
- New Process Integration and Documentation - documenting policies and procedures and ensuring that these policies and new practices take root is a key component that is integrated into a continuous training philosophy instilled within the Training Center projects of each institution.
