Times of India: Chennai: Monday,
October 10, 2016.
The Tamil
Nadu State Information Commission (TNSIC) has chalked out plans to improve the
RTI Act's compliance by state government departments, as well as consult
stakeholders regularly by creating a consultative committee.
The first
exercise would be to review the pro-active disclosure of information by various
state government departments, on their websites.
Majority of
these departments have not updated their official websites in many years
despite Section 4(1)(b) of the RTI Act listing out 17 categories of information
that should be disclosed and section 4(2) mandating that information should be
provided suo-motu at periodic intervals.
The review
will be financially supported by the National Federation of Information
Commissions of India (NFICI).
"Many
departments created websites to carry information as the act stipulated that it
should be done within 120 days of the enactment of the act. However, they are
now in a fossilised condition with outdated information and statistics," a
senior official of TNSIC said. They have taken up this study and will be making
recommendations to all departments, he added.
RTI activists
have pointed out that many government departments in neighbouring Karnataka
keep them updated with real-time data. For instance, the Bangalore metropolitan
Transport Corporation (BMTC) which operates the city's buses has uploaded a
number of documents including the particulars of facilities available to the
citizen in the link to RTI. Chennai's Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC)
only has the names of the Public Information Officers (PIO).
The poor
compliance was due to the lack of responsibility assigned to any particular
official, the TNSIC official said. "It may be a good idea to nominate
someone as the Suo Motu Disclosure Officer. The Head of the Department (HOD)
must ensure that there is no duplication or errors in the uploaded data,"
he said.
Ironically,
even the TNSIC's website was also one of the websites without regular updates
and the upgrade has only started recently. The annual reports from 2011 are not
available on their website.
The other
plan of TNSIC is to start a consultative committee to take suggestions from
stakeholders like PIOs and RTI applicants to iron out contentious issues which
are not clearly laid out in the act. "For example, somebody might send
hundreds of petitions seeking detailed queries, but dealing with his queries
might be at the cost of hundred other applicants who might have to wait even if
their needs are urgent," the official said.
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