-------------------------------- NCPRI Press Release - 5-11-2014 ------------------------------- The National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information (NCPRI) welcomes the Office Memorandum (OM) issued by the DoPT on 21/10/2014 which directs all Ministries/departments to upload RTI queries and their responses, except those relating to the personal information of an individual which does not serve any public interest, on their website. This initiative, if properly implemented, will benefit people who have access to the internet as they will be able to obtain information which has been previously sought by any citizen under the RTI Act, without filing an RTI application. This measure will also potentially save time and resources of public authorities. To ensure that the RTI applications and replies that are uploaded are useful for people, the public authorities must make sure that the information is properly categorized and organised in such a manner that it facilitates easy retrieval. Information on the website must be organised in a searchable and retrievable database to enable people to access the records. The OM has been issued to operationalise provisions of the guidelines issued by the DoPT in April 2013 which prescribed uploading RTI applications and their responses. The guidelines were based on the recommendations made by a taskforce constituted for effective implementation of Section 4 of the RTI Act. The guidelines issued in April 2013 prescribed additional information for proactive disclosures and guidelines for digital publication. In a second tranche of recommendations issued in November 2013, the DoPT detailed guidelines for disclosure by state governments along with templates for disclosure at various levels - including illustrative templates for disclosure of information related to the Public Distribution System (PDS), Panchayats, MGNREGA and primary & secondary schools. While the current OM is a welcome step to ensure implementation of one of the recommendations of the guidelines, the NCPRI hopes that the DoPT will also take steps to ensure compliance with the other recommendations of the guidelines issued in April and November 2013, which will strengthen the implementation of Section 4 of the RTI Act. A recently concluded study by the RTI Assessment & Advocacy Group (RaaG) in collaboration with the NCPRI, found that nearly 70% of the RTI applications seek information that should have been proactively made public without citizens having to file an RTI application (rti-assessment/raag---ces--rti-study-2011-13.html). Signed- Anjali Bhardwaj, Nikhil Dey, Venkatesh Nayak, Bhaskar Prabhu, Joykumar Wahengbam, Rakesh Dubbudu
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 10:21:27 +0000
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