Although its mission is to assist migrants of all nationalities from all over the world, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) is indirectly promoting the capabilities of Filipinos in information technology.

This is because IOM has made the Philippines the center of its global IT infrastructure that supports some 200 offices in more than 100 countries, and, in so doing, has encouraged the migration of Filipino IT professionals to other parts of the world.

IOM"s Philippine office currently employs some 25 Filipino professionals.

"Some of them have the opportunity to work in our other offices across the globe. In fact, one of our staff here who heads our messaging department has recently been transferred to our North America headquarters," said William Kwende, who heads the global agency"s Manila-based IT Service Center.

Kwende wants to beef up his IT staff by hiring about 10 more people this year to handle the ongoing deployment of an Internet Protocol (IP)-based communication infrastructure, powered by networking equipment IOM recently bought from Cisco Systems.

Growing Expenses

Prior to the construction of this IP-based infrastructure, IOM was relying on traditional leased lines and dial-up connections to connect its offices all over the globe. This entailed hundreds of thousands of dollars in communication expenses.

"Conversation hours between Geneva (Switzerland) and Manila alone amount to at least 40 hours a day," Kwende noted. "As the number of IOM offices around the world increased, we saw our expenses for leased lines skyrocketing."

With a virtual private network (VPN) system in place now, IOM offices around the world can communicate through Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony and exchange information securely via the Internet.

Kwende added that IOM has also invested some $4 million in developing its own internal system for "migrant processing." IOM has its own software development team that is also based in Manila and composed of Filipino programmers.

IOM works closely with governments of member-states to address the needs of migrants worldwide. In the Philippines, it works closely with agencies like the Department of Foreign Affairs in orienting and assisting Filipinos migrating to other countries.

Since establishing a local office in 1981, IOM has slowly transferred most of its administrative functions from its headquarters in Geneva to its Manila office, thereby making the Philippines its regional headquarters in the Asia Pacific.

Aside from its IT functions, the Manila office handles a gamut of processes like accounting, treasury, insurance, project support, and human resource management.

"We have transferred most of our IT functions from Geneva to Manila since two years ago. This has been expanding at a rapid rate," said Bruce Reed, IOM"s Asia Pacific chief.