MONITORING AND EVALUATION

In order to ensure that the law is achieving the aims endorsed by the Government, it is important that implementation of the Act is supported by an effective ongoing monitoring and evaluation system. This will enable implementation efforts to be assessed and reviewed, so that best practice can be distilled and copied, and areas for improvement can be identified and worked upon.

The Central Act imposes a monitoring regime which, in practice, will require:

• Production of Annual Reports
• Ongoing Collection of Statistics

Ad Hoc Recommendations
Monitoring activities can assist the Governments and Information Commissions to evaluate how effectively public bodies are discharging their obligations and to gather information, which can be used to support recommendations for reform. In this context it is notable that section 25(5) of the Central Act specifically enables Information Commissions to make recommendations to public authorities to improve their performance, where montioring shows that the public authority's practices do not confirm with the provisions or spirit of the Act.

Right to Information Councils
Although the Central Act does not include a requirement for civil society-government monitoring partnerships, drawing on experience at the State level, this may be an additional monitoring mechainsm that Governments may wish to consider introducing via Rules. The Delhi, Goa and the now-repealed Maharashtra laws, for example, required the establishment of right to information councils - which had to include some civil society representatives - to oversee implementation.

While such State RTI Councils have yet to become entrenched institutionally, they do potentially provide an important mechanism for monitoring implementation, and drawing on civil society inputs to find out where implementation is working or not working. Maharashtra's RTI Council was probably been the most active, with regular meetings being held, usually once a month. Notably though, for such monitoring bodies to be effective, they require strong commitment from government representatives, who need to be active in listening to civil society representatives and acting on their recommendations.

Please click on the link to the Central RTI Act to read the detailed provisions contained in the law. Please click on the link to CHRI's State RTI pages to find out more about relevant rules and implementation in your specific State.