Economic
Times: New Delhi: Thursday, 02 July 2015.
The
government needs to do away with a secrecy-dominated organisational approach
and initiate an "open government", a two-member panel formed by the
Central Information Commission has said in its report. The committee has
recommended that each government department should declare open and negative
lists of information and proactively publish updated information on websites.
The
two-member committee, comprising former CIC AN Tiwari and former information
commissioner MM Ansari, has submitted a critical 150-page report
"Transparency Audit towards an Open and Accountable Government" to
CIC and department of personnel and training (DoPT). The committee was formed
last year and was mandated to see how government departments are faring in
proactive disclosure of information, the quality of disclosure and how to
conduct a third-party transparency audit of the government.
The
committee's report, which was accepted by DoPT on Monday, says the proactive
disclosure by departments under Section 4 of RTI Act is lacking. The committee
has cited the example of National Data Sharing Accessibility Policy, which has
a negative list.
The report
says, "Possibly, time is now for all several transparency related
initiatives to be brought under a common umbrella in the form of 'open
government initiative', which should result in an unambiguous announcement by
the government about its commitment to open government through transparency in
all its functions, except those, which for specific reasons, must remain
secret.
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