Times of India: New Delhi: Monday, July 10, 2017.
Ever since
the Right to Information Act, 2005, came into effect, departments and agencies
under Delhi government have received 2,74,737 applications. As many as 2,70,897
of these have been responded to: the pendency with public information officers
in state departments is just 0.7%. Starting Monday, the AAP government is all
set to enable an online RTI portal to make the process of filing, tracking,
payment and response available at a few clicks away.
Not just the
filing of the application, the first appeal can also be submitted online now.
Under the RTI Act, a total of 9,088 appeals have been received so far. Of
these, 8,996 have been disposed of. The fee payment, too, can be done online
through this portal, developed and customized by NIC and facilitated by the IT
department.
According to
the government, Delhi will now become the first union territory to make RTI
filing and related processes online. There are a few central ministries that
have RTI portals, apart from the state of Maharashtra.
The
administrative reforms department, which is the nodal agency for monitoring and
effective implementation of RTI Act in the Delhi government, has decided that
every department will now have a nodal officer of its own for RTI.
This officer
will be responsible for ensuring that applications go to the right public
information officer. All 172 government departments have registered on the
portal.
The portal
will be launched by chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday and promises to
make the RTI experience free of cumbersome processes.
"One can
file the application online. Once that is done, the portal will allow tracking
of the status by a citizen. There will be a pendency report available and
e-mail and SMS alerts will also be provided," said cabinet minister
Kailash Gahlot, who is in charge of administrative reforms and information
technology.
Gahlot said
the idea was to cut down the number of steps involved in the process. "For
instance, if a person applies for some documents, he needs to pay for the
printouts. If there are many documents, it means taking a whole lot of
printouts.
Now,
documents can be uploaded and mailed to the applicant. This will allow him/her
to have a soft copy, which they can print whenever needed," Gahlot said.
The payment
of the RTI fee will be done through the SBI e-payment gateway.
To ensure
that people who want to file an RTI application through the portal do not face
any problem, a section on guidelines and frequently asked questions has been
created. Also, people wanting to make an application will be able to reach out
to a help desk. A feedback mechanism too has been evolved.
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