MONITORING AND EVALUATION

Ongoing Collection of Statistics

While the Central Act makes the Information Commissions responsible for producing an Annual Report, it also states that every Ministry or Department is under a duty to provide the Information Commission with whatever information they need to produce the report.

In practical terms, this means that all public authorities will need to set in place monitoring systems to collect statistical information about the processing of applications and appeals. Ideally, the nodal agency responsible for implementation will develop a monitoring system. It could be paper based, whereby all PIOs and Appellate Authorities maintain paper files and notes of how they handle cases. It could also be computer-based, whereby information is inputted into a database which can then easily be used to provide monitoring reports and statistics. (NB: In the UK, a computer-based RTI monitoring database is used to track applications and appeals.) Alternatively, recognising that at lower levels of government, computers may not be available, in India some form of computer and paper based monitoring may be the best option.

Ongoing collection and collation of statistics should be a minimum requirement for all public bodies. The annual reporting requirements in the Act require that some record is kept of all applications and appeals received and how they are dealt with. Additionally, using this information, heads of public authorities, nodal agencies and Information Commissions can regularly assess whether authorities are meeting their obligations under the Act. In doing so, they can also identify any public authorities which perhaps require additional training or systems support - for example, because statistics show that they are regularly missing deadlines for disposing of applications or appeals.

Drawing on experience in India and abroad, at a minimum, every public body should require each APIO, PIO and Appellate Authority to maintain some form of register of applications, which records:

• The total applications and appeals received, disposed of and outstanding;
• For each application and appeal received:
  • name of applicant;
  • date the application was received;
  • summary of information requested;
  • fees charged, if any;
  • time taken to process the request;
  • what information was released if any;
  • if the application was rejected, the exemption clause relied upon;
  • if the application was rejected, whether the rejection was apppealed and if so, what was the result of the appeal.

At a minimum, the information should be collected from APIOs, PIOs and Appellate Authorities each month and collated and then sent to the Government Department responsible for overall implementation of the Act. This is what happened in Maharashtra under the now-repealed State RTI law. Ideally, the information collected should also be published every month on a government website, so that the public can have ongoing information on how effectively the Act is being implemented.