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?