Friday, December 19, 2014

Yet another committee set up to ensure implementation of Sec 4 of RTI Act

Moneylife: Pune: Friday, 19 December 2014.
DoPT has again appointed a two-member committee to look into compliance of the most important transparency provision, which is the Section 4, of the RTI Act.
It looks like transparency has become a pain in the neck for most public authorities. Section 4 of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, which makes suo motu disclosure mandatory and which is the most powerful section of this transparency law, is being dodged by most government departments despite innumerable circulars, orders and recommendations.
The latest attempt to get government babus to conform to the transparency required by RTI, is the creation of a two member committee for developing a monitoring mechanism to ensure that Section 4 is being implemented to the fullest. This is probably the outcome of the recommendation of the government appointed task force comprising several experts and NGOs, to help the Central Information Commission come up with a way forward.
AN Tiwari, former Chief Information Commissioner and professor MM Ansari, former Information Commissioner, are the two members on the task force, who have been appointed last month for a three month period. The task force was appointed, “for developing detailed guidelines and methodology for monitoring the implementation of Section 4 of the RTI Act, including conducting audit of selected Ministries and Public Authorities, etc.’’
As per the office order issued by the Central Information Commission (CIC) on 26 November 2014, the two member committee is expected to develop basic parameters of disclosure and audit, as per Section 4 of the RTI Act. It is to prepare guidelines for test-checking third party audits in terms of compliance and adequacy of the disclosures. It will look to develop and suggest mechanisms for improving the content and quality of the disclosures, make recommendations for a long term framework for methodology for conducting such audits, identify critical areas which require special focus to give impetus to Section 4 disclosure, conducting sample test audit for few Public Authorities and suggesting a mechanism for identifying agencies for carrying out audit.
It may be noted that the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) had sent official memorandums to all public authorities on 15th April, 2013; 10th December, 2013 and a reminder again on 4th September, 2014, reminding them to comply with the guidelines on suo motu disclosures under Section 4 of the RTI Act and send an Action Taken Report on the compliance. It had stated in its letters that, “each Ministry and Public Authority shall ensure that the guidelines for suo motu disclosure under RTI are fully operationalised within a period of 6 months from the date of their issuance i.e. 15.04.2013. It was also mentioned that the Action Taken Report on the compliance of guidelines should be sent, alongwith the URL link, to the DoPT and the Central lnformation Commission soon after the expiry of the initial period of the 6 months. It has been noticed that most of the Ministries/Departments/Public Authorities have not sent the compliance report or Action Taken Report to this Department and Central lnformation Commission.’’
The same letter also said, “each Ministry/Public Authority should get its proactive disclosure package audited by a third party every year and such an audit should be communicated to the CIC through publication on their own website.”
It may be recalled that The DoPT, which had set up a task force in 2011 for comprehensive implementation of pro-active disclosure under Right to Information (RTI), had issued detailed guidelines through an official memorandum of 15 April 2013, to public authorities for pro-active disclosure of information under Section 4 of the RTI Act.
The ultimate reason for setting up of the Task Force was that, “the quality and quantity of proactive disclosure is not up to a desired level. It was felt that the weak implementation of Section 4 of the RTI Act is partly due to the fact that certain provisions of the Section are not fully detailed and in case of certain other provisions there is a need for laying down detailed guidelines… there is also a need to set up a compliance mechanism.’’
In one of its recommendations, the task force had stated that, “the DoPT (should) provide all information Commission with infrastructural support, to be able to undertake audits of the performance of public authorities vis-à-vis their proactive disclosure obligations under the RTI Act. In the absence of such a mechanism, state governments are unlikely to establish effective monitoring mechanism on their own.”
Nonetheless, it is indeed curious that the rules requiring the uploading of all functioning, proposals, decisions and grants by public authorities on the website, should create so much fuss and resistance and waste of public funds. Such committees are set up, for ensuring implementation of elementary information. What is complicated, of course, is the obvious – that skeletons will tumble out of the cupboard if transparency is 100%. Which public authority would want that?