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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Centre to conduct study to ascertain RTI cost to government in providing information to citizens-Aman Sharma
-The Economic Times

The government has decided to conduct a study on the implementation of the Right to Information (RTI) Act to know the cost to the government in providing information to citizens under the UPA's showpiece initiative and whether it has helped improve its "public perception about the extent of reduction in corruption".

As per the RTI Act of 2005, only Rs 10 fee is required to seek information from any public authority, but various government officials have complained of the huge cost they have to bear to divert resources and effort to answer RTI pleas.

On October 12, while speaking at the annual convention of information commissioners in the Capital, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had also mentioned about frivolous and vexatious use of the Act in demanding information covering along time that possibly serves no public purpose and is a drain on the resources of the public authorities, leading to diversion of precious man-hours.

The government has earlier got a study conducted from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in 2009 on the key issues and constrains in implementing the RTI Act. But, for the first time, the government is attempting to "calculate the cost to government in providing information under RTI", as per the scope of work of the new study for which the Department of Personnel and Training has invited bids on January 4.

"To further strengthen the RTI regime, it has been decided to do a 360-degree study of the implementation of the RTI Act. The study will cover both states and the central government, across various sectors, and will cover public authorities at Centre, state, district and panchayat level," the bid document says.

The scope of the study also involves assessing "public perception about the extent of reduction in corruption". "Since the implementation of the Act there has been a significant and perceptible change in the level of transparency in the working of the governments at the Centre, state and the sub-state level," the bid document claims.

The scope of the study includes a study of trends in filing of RTI applications or appeals across the country. The government also wants an institution or organisation to study the use of RTI Act by different types of applicants — in cases where applicant type is identifiable from the application.

The study will assess the type of information sought and its classification into "personal information" sought by employees, procurement-related information sought "without any apparent objective/purpose" and general information sought without specificity across sections.

"The implementation of the provisions of the Act has to be studied from the perspective of both the demand and supply side. The approach to achieving the above is viewing RTI applications and their responses from the information seekers' and providers' angle," the bid document says.

The study will, hence, determine the level of satisfaction among the people with the functioning of the Act and the experience of public authorities at different levels in dealing with RTI applications and appeals, the document has mentioned.

The earlier study conducted on the RTI Act for the government by PwC highlighted that during an information seeker survey, more than 75% of the citizens said they were dissatisfied with the quality of information being provided while the public information officers complained of ineffective record management system in the government which led to delay in processing RTI applications.

The study said while the RTI Act has been clear in defining the responsibility of the appropriate government, with respect to creating awareness on the Act, there has been lack of initiative from the government's side on this front.