Economic Times: New Delhi: Saturday, October 25, 2014.
Keeping in
view increasing numbers of cases of non-compliance of orders, the central
information commission is working on an information management system (IMS) to
keep a tab on the defaulting public information officer (PIO).
The IMS which
is awaiting DoPT's approval would enable officials to prepare list of
defaulting PIOs and also status of other orders passed by the commission, which
is the apex body for RTI complaints at the centre. This would help commission
take action against frequent erring officials and help applicant get needed
information. This apart, the system would send SMS alert to complainants as
soon as their complaints gets registered. It would also keep them updated on
the progress of the complaint.
In June, the
commission sent the proposal to the department of personnel and training, nodal
agency for implementation of the RTI act and subsequently held discussions over
it. "DoPT has sent us some queries pertaining to implementation of the
system which we have replied. We are now waiting for the approval," said a
senior official with commission. The commission has already designed the system.
Several
orders passed by the commission are not implemented and there is no system to
track them to punish the defaulting PIO. This has resulted in increasing number
of rejection of RTI applications in recent past. At present, the commission
does not maintain any register for non-compliance cases. Thus, the total number
of such cases are unknown. However, officials say that it could run in
thousands. The commission decides on nearly 60-70 cases every day and during
2013-14 it registered more than 20,000 complaints.
RTI experts
opine that such system would put pressure on the officials to comply with
orders leading to strengthening of the transparency law. The purpose of the act
fails if the applicant does not get information sought even after getting a
favorable order from the commission, said Hyderabad based RTI expert CJ Karira.
"Commission needs to digitize its work as several cases of complaints
missing and getting lost have come up," he added.
The CIC is
the second level of appeal for RTI petitioners who are dissatisfied with
responses provided by the public information officer and subsequently, the
first appellate authority, who is usually the senior officer in the same
department. The time limit for responding to both the petition and appeal is 30
days.
The problem
of non-compliance of orders was discussed by the commission in its meeting held
last month. "A proposal for additional staff may be sent to the DOPT for
its consideration as the present staff strength is grossly inadequate to deal
with such cases in the registry," said the minutes of meeting.
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