Are public authorities following suo motu disclosure norms under Section 4 of RTI Act?

In order to reduce the number of individual RTI applications, Department of Personnel & Training-DoPT, has issued fresh guidelines to public authoritiesto suo motu publish all information as required under Section 4 of the RTI Act, based on a taskforce report. But does any public authority care?

Four months after the Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT) issued fresh guidelines to public authorities to abide by the suo motu disclosure under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the implementation seems questionable going by the general indifference of Public Information Officers (PIOs). This would have strengthened compliance with provisions for proactive disclosure as given in Section 4 of the RTI Act.

The government had appointed a Task Force comprising leading RTI activists of the Civil Society in 2011. Based on the report, the DoPT has directed all public authorities to strictly abide by the norms. The office memorandum to all public authorities states, “…The purpose of suo motu disclosures under Section 4 is to place large amount of information in public domain on a proactive basis to make the functioning of the Public Authoritiesmore transparent and also to reduce the need for filing individual RTI applications.”

Citing that the “quality and quantity of proactive disclosure is not up to the desired level, it was felt that the weak implementation of the Section 4 of the RTI Act is partly because certain provisions of this Section have not been fully detailed and, in case of certain other provisions, there is need for laying down detailed guidelines. Further there is need to set up a compliance mechanism to ensure that requirements under section 4 of the RTI Act are met.”

The guidelines issued by DoPT on 15 April 2013 include posting of information on websites too. Interestingly, all government departments have to mandatorily include a chapter on RTI Act compliance. The memo states, “Government has issued directions to all Ministries/ Departments to include a chapter on RTI Act in their Annual Reportssubmitted to the Parliament. Details about compliance with proactive disclosure guidelines should mandatorily be included in the relevant chapter in Annual Report of Ministry/Department.’’

Every public authority has been asked to do an audit report and the respective ministry has been asked to monitor it.

Following are the rules that should have been implemented by all public authorities:

Procurement made by Public Authorities:

• publication of notice/tender enquiries, corrigenda thereon, and details of bid awards detailing the name of the supplier of goods/services being procured or the works contracts entered or any such combination of these and the rate and total amount at which such procurement or works contract is to be done should be disclosed.

Public Private Partnerships

• If Public services are proposed to be provided through a public-private-partnership (PPP), all information relating to the PPPs must be disclosed in the public domain by thePublic Authority entering into the PPP contract/concession agreement. This may include details of the special purpose vehicle (SPV), if any set up, detailed project reports, concession agreements, operation and maintenance manuals and other documents generated as part of the implementation of the PPP project. Further, information about fees, tolls, or other kinds of revenue that may be collected under authorization from the Government, information in respect of outputs and outcomes, process of selection of the private sector party may also be proactively disclosed. All payments made under the PPP project may also be disclosed in a periodic manner along with the purpose of making such payment.

Transfer Policy and Transfer Orders

• Transfer policy for different grades/cadres of employees serving in Public Authorityshould be proactively disclosed. All transfer orders should be publicized through the website or in any other manner listed in Section 4(4) of the Act. These guidelines would not be applicable in cases of transfers made keeping in view sovereignty, integrity, security, strategic, scientific or economic interests of the State and the exemptions covered under Section 8 of the Act. These instructions would not apply to security and intelligenceorganizations under the second schedule of the RTI Act.

RTI Applications

• All Public Authorities shall proactively disclose RTI applications and appeals received and their responses, on the websites maintained by Public Authorities with search facility based on key words. RTI applications and appeals received and their responses relating to the personal information of an individual may not be disclosed, as they do not serve any public interest.

Citizens Charter

• As part of the Result Framework Document of the department/organization should be proactively disclosed and six monthly report on the performance against the benchmarks set in Citizens Charter should also be displayed on the website of public authorities.

Discretionary and Non-discretionary grants

• All discretionary /non-discretionary grants/ allocations to state governments/ NGOs/Other institutions by Ministry/Department should be placed on the website of the Ministry/ Department concerned. Annual Accounts of all legal entities who are provided grants by Public Authorities should be made available through publication, directly or indirectly on the Public Authority’s website.

         

Foreign Tours of PM/Ministers

• A large number of RTI queries are being filed on official tours undertaken by Ministers or officials of various Government Ministries/Departments. Information regarding the nature, place and period of foreign and domestic tours of Prime Minister are already disclosed on the PMO’s website. As per DoPT’s OM No. 1/8/2012-IR dated 11/9/2012, Public Authorities may proactively disclose the details of foreign and domestic official tours undertaken by the Minister(s) and officials of the rank of Joint Secretary to the Government of India and above and Heads of Departments, since 1st January, 2012. The disclosures may be updated once every quarter.

• Information to be disclosed proactively may contain nature of the official tour, places visited, the period, number of people included in the official delegation and total cost of such travel undertaken

Guidelines for digital publication of proactive disclosure under Section 4

• Section 4 lays down that information should be provided through many mediums depending upon the level of the public authority and the recipient of information (for example, in case of Panchayat, wall painting may be more effective means of dissemination of information), and that more and more proactive disclosure would gradually be made through Internet. There is need for more clear guidelines for web-based publication of information for disclosure

• It should be the endeavour of all public authorities that all entitlements to citizens and all transactions between the citizen and government are gradually made available through computer based interface. The ‘Electronic Delivery of Services Bill, 2012’under formulation in Government of India would provide the necessary impetus.

• Websites should contain detailed information from the point of origin to the point of delivery of entitlements/services provided by the Public Authorities to citizens

• Orders of the public authority should be uploaded on the website immediately after they have been issued

• Website should contain all the relevant Acts, Rules, forms and other documents which are normally accessed by citizens

• Each Ministry/Public Authority shall ensure that these guidelines are fully operationalized within a period of 6 months from the date of their issue

• Proactive disclosure as per these guidelines would require collating a large quantum of information and digitizing it. Ministries/Public Authorities may engage consultants or outsource such work to expeditiously comply with these guidelines. For this purpose, the plan/non-plan funds of that department may be utilized

• Each Ministry/ Public Authority should get its proactive disclosure package audited by third party every year. The audit should cover compliance with the proactive disclosure guidelines as well as adequacy of the items included in the package. The audit should examine whether there are any other types of information which could be proactively disclosed. Such audit should be done annually and should be communicated to the Central Information Commission annually through publication on their own websites. All Public Authorities should proactively disclose the names of the third party auditors on their website

• For carrying out third party audit through outside consultants also, ministries/Public Authorities should utilize their plan/non-plan funds. The Central Information Commission should examine the third-party audit reports for each Ministry/Public Authority and offer advice/recommendations to the concerned Ministries/ Public Authorities.

• Central Information Commission should carry out sample audit of few of the Ministries/ Public Authorities each year with regard to adequacy of items included as well as compliance of the Ministry/Public Authority with these guidelines.

For more details, visit: www.cic.gov.in

(Vinita Deshmukh is the consulting editor of Moneylife, an RTI activist and convener of the Pune Metro Jagruti Abhiyaan. She is the recipient of prestigious awards like the Statesman Award for Rural Reporting which she won twice in 1998 and 2005 and the Chameli Devi Jain award for outstanding media person for her investigation series on Dow Chemicals. She co-authored the book “To The Last Bullet - The Inspiring Story of A Braveheart - Ashok Kamte” with Vinita Kamte and is the author of “The Mighty Fall”)

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