The government on Thursday said it has formulated guidelines that provide for a third party audit to assess compliance of a provision of the RTI Act, which mandates a public authority to put governance related information in the public domain.
The Ministry of Personnel had on April 15, 2013, issued detailed guidelines to central ministries or departments for proactive disclosure under section 4 of the transparency law.
However, these guidelines were not being followed by various central government ministries, which had prompted it to issue a directive in this regard.
The departments were asked to comply with the guidelines within six months.
“It was also requested that the action taken report on the compliance of guidelines should be sent, along with the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) link, to Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) and the Central Information Commission (CIC) soon after the expiry of the initial period of the six months. It has been noticed that most of the ministries or departments or public authorities have not sent the compliance report or action taken report to this department and CIC,” the Ministry had said in a recently issued office memorandum.
In a press release issued on Thursday, the Personnel Ministry said it should be a constant endeavour of every public authority to take steps for providing information suo motu to the public at regular intervals through various means of communications, including internet, so that the public has to minimally resort to the use of RTI Act to obtain information.
The release is a part of efforts being made to publicise the Act and make people aware of various steps being taken by the government, a senior Ministry official said.
The guidelines also require public authorities to supply information requested by any citizen and to permit him or her to inspect the documents and collect samples of various works, it said.
State governments have also been requested to consider issuing similar guidelines, along with templates for disclosure at various levels, for better implementation of suo motu disclosure at state level, the release said.
Four areas have been identified for development of templates — public distribution system (PDS), panchayats, MGNREGA and primary and secondary schools.
The RTI Act calls on public authorities to suo-motu disclose or publish information.
During 2011-12, CIC had received 33,922 appeals or complaints and disposed of 23,112 of them.
The CIC had received 28,875 appeals and 24,071 complaints during 2010-11 as against 22,800 appeals and 19,482 complaints in 2009-10.
Out of 95 countries, the Right to Information Act, 2005 has been rated second, last year, on the “International Right to know Day” (September 28) globally in a study conducted by the Access Info Europe and the Centre for Law and Democracy.
Both these institutions are human rights organisations working in Europe and Canada respectively.
A web portal named ‘RTI Online’ has been launched for all central ministries to facilitate Indian citizens to file online RTI applications and first appeals and also make online payment of RTI fees.
The RTI Act empowers a citizen to seek information related to governance from government departments, also referred to as public authority, through an application and after payment of Rs. 10 as fee.
