What is ‘critical information infrastructure’, who protects it?

 The Union Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) has declared IT resources of ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and UPI managing entity NPCI as ‘critical information infrastructure’. The notification to this effect was issued on June 16. What is ‘critical information infrastructure’, and who protects it?

What is critical information infrastructure?

The Information Technology Act of 2000 defines “Critical Information Infrastructure” as a “computer resource, the incapacitation or destruction of which shall have debilitating impact on national security, economy, public health or safety”.

The government, under the Act, has the power to declare any data, database, IT network or communications infrastructure as CII to protect that digital asset.

Any person who secures access or attempts to secure access to a protected system in violation of the law can be punished with a jail term of up to 10 years.

Why is CII classification and protection necessary?

World over governments have been moving with alacrity to protect their critical information infrastructure. IT resources form the backbone of countless critical operations in a country’s infrastructure, and given their interconnectedness, disruptions can have a cascading effect across sectors. An information technology failure at a power grid can lead to prolonged outages crippling other sectors like healthcare, banking services.

In 2007, a wave of denial-of-service attacks, allegedly from Russian IP addresses, hit major Estonian banks, government bodies – ministries and parliament, and media outlets. It was cyber aggression of the kind that the world had not seen before, and it came in the wake of Estonia’s decision to move a memorial to the Soviet Red Army to a location of less prominence. The attacks played havoc in one of the most networked countries in the world for almost three weeks.

On October 12, 2020 as India battled the pandemic, the electric grid supply to Mumbai suddenly snapped hitting the mega city’s hospitals, trains and businesses. Later, a study by a US firm that looks into the use of the internet by states, claimed that this power outage could have been a cyber attack, allegedly from a China-linked group, aimed at critical infrastructure. The government, however, was quick to deny any cyber attack in Mumbai.

But the incident underlined the possibility of hostile state and non-state actors probing internet-dependent critical systems in other countries, and the necessity to fortify such assets.

How are CIIs protected in India?

Created in January 2014, the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) is the nodal agency for taking all measures to protect the nation’s critical information infrastructure.It is mandated to guard CIIs from “unauthorized access, modification, use, disclosure, disruption, incapacitation or distraction”.

According to its website, NCIIPC will monitor and forecast national-level threats to CII for policy guidance, expertise sharing and situational awareness for early warning or alerts. The basic responsibility for protecting the CII system shall lie with the agency running that CII, it says.

“In the event of any threat to critical information infrastructure the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre may call for information and give directions to the critical sectors or persons serving or having a critical impact on Critical Information Infrastructure,” the NCIIPC website adds.

Written by Saurabh Kapoor

Source: Indian Express, 19/06/22

Government must iron out flaws in RTI Act, not manipulate loopholes

The one area where the BJP government has failed to imitate the UPA government is in its commitment to uphold democracy by supporting people-centric initiatives.

The words of Sir Francis Bacon — “Knowledge is power” — aptly bring out the essence of the Right to Information Act (RTI). Knowledge, gained through access to correct information, has the ability to upturn the power dynamic: It places a person at a formidable position to fight for their rights and enables them to ask vital questions.

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The introduction of this Act into the country’s approach to governance has revolutionised the democratic landscape of India. It has strengthened the principles of democracy, which in Abraham Lincoln’s words is “of the people, by the people and for the people”, by facilitating people’s participation in governance. Empowerment of the people by enabling the demand of information from government authorities lifted the veil of secrecy from government functioning — which helped in keeping a check on arbitrary decision making by public institutions. Contrary to popular belief, the RTI was not just limited to the urban elites; it gave voice to the poor sections of the society by providing them with a tool of information to hold the government accountable. This was confirmed by a nation-wide assessment held by PricewaterhouseCoopers, which stated that out of two million RTI applications filed between 2005 and 2009, a total of 4,00,000 were from rural areas.

Even though the Supreme Court in S P Gupta vs President Of India And Ors (1982) held the right to information as a fundamental right, India struggled to have a national law on it for the next 20 years. The National Campaign for People’s Right to Information’s (NCPRI) RTI Bill was delayed multiple times by the then NDA government. In 2002, under pressure from the SC, the government introduced a weakened and toothless Freedom to Information Act in the Parliament. Despite being passed by the Parliament and receiving Presidential assent, the act was never notified by the NDA government.

When the UPA government, led by the Congress, took office in 2004, the struggle of the right to information movement finally bore fruit — the Right to Information Act was enacted in 2005. The Act remains the strongest legislation made by any government across the world in the context of transparency and access to information. It was possible with active engagement between civil society organisations, NCPRI, National Advisory Council and the government.

Alongside the enactment of the RTI, the Second Administration Reforms Commission, which I headed, was set up by the then Union government to reform the public administrative system. On analyses of the Act, the commission concluded that right to information formed the foundation of good governance, as transparency is one of its core elements. It was realised that the strengthening of the RTI would be a step towards transforming the covert public administrative system into a “public-centric” administrative system. Therefore, the commission recommended various measures to toughen the Act and make procedures to access information people-friendly. These ranged from the repealing of the Official Secret Act, introducing an oath of transparency to use of multi-media campaigns in local languages for awareness and opening up the working of parliamentary standing committees for public access.

In October 2018, the RTI completed 13 years of its inception. For the last few years, it has faced constant onslaught by the current regime. The latest Global Right to Information Rating has ranked India at the sixth position, a rank lower than last year. While under the UPA government, India positioned itself at second place, under the BJP-led government the ranking has successively dropped. Such a drop is further contextualised with the findings of a study conducted by the Satark Nagrik Sangathan and Centre for Equity Studies. It revealed that Central Information Commission took an average of 319 days to hear and give an order on an appeal from the date it was filed before the commission, with the maximum number of days taken by the CIC reaching to 862 days. The callous attitude of Information Commissioners (ICs) reflects in the fact that an average of 56 per cent of orders recorded violations of Section 20 of the RTI, based on which penalties should have been imposed. But a penalty was imposed in only 4 per cent of the cases.

The inactivity of the government in strengthening the RTI has led to only seven ICs working at present of which, along with the Chief Information Commissioner, fours ICs are to retire by the end of this year — reducing the strength of CIC to just three, against the mandated strength of 11. To further its motive to break the structure of transparency and accountability, it has attempted to weaken the RTI through an amendment, which gives the power to decide the tenure and salary of the ICs to the central government; thereby, directly influencing the independence of the CIC. A fresh attempt to indirectly amend the RTI has also been made through the Personal Data Protection Bill that makes the wordings of Section 8(j) of the RTI vague, not specifying the extent of harm or differentiation between personal information and personal data.

The regular protests by the civil society against the lethargy of the current government in effectively protecting the people’s right to information reflects the severity of the problem, especially against the backdrop of recent interference by the BJP-led government in the autonomous institutions of our country.

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The one area where the BJP government has failed to imitate the UPA government is in its commitment to uphold democracy by supporting people-centric initiatives. A democratic government’s duty is to ensure the trust of its citizens emboldens with every step it takes. However, the recent efforts of the present regime go against this fundamental principle. Giving up its anti-people decisions, it must ensure that it fills the loopholes in the RTI Act rather than digging for more of them.

Source: Indian Express, 11/01/2019

Hamstringing the RTI Act

Instead of holding a public debate on making the Act more effective, the government is seeking to dilute its provisions

The Right to Information (RTI) Act, operationalised in October 2005, was seen as a powerful tool for citizen empowerment. It showed an early promise by exposing wrongdoings at high places, such as in the organisation of the Commonwealth Games, and the allocation of 2G spectrum and coal blocks. However, it now faces multiple challenges.

The Act, path-breaking in many respects, did not give adequate authority to the Information Commissions to enforce their decisions. Besides awarding compensation to an applicant for any loss suffered, the commissions can direct public authorities to take the steps necessary to comply with the Act, but are helpless if such directions are ignored.

True, if an officer fails to fulfil his duty, the commission can either impose a maximum penalty of Rs. 25,000 or recommend disciplinary action against him. However, this deterrent works only when the piece of information lies at the lower levels; it is ineffective in many cases where information relates to higher levels of government. Implementation of decisions taken by the commissions, therefore, remains a weak link.

Proposed amendments

The recently proposed amendments to the Act would, instead of strengthening the hands of commissions, weaken them. The government proposes to do away with the equivalence of the Central Information Commissioners with the Election Commissioners on the ground that the two have different mandates. The underlying assumption that transparency is less important for a democracy than holding of free and fair elections is preposterous.

The government also proposes to replace the existing fixed five-year tenure of the Information Commissioners with a tenure as may be prescribed by it. This would make the tenure a largesse to be bestowed by the government. This would be detrimental to the independence and authority of the Information Commissions.

The Act struck a balance between privacy and transparency by barring the disclosure of personal information if it has no relationship to any public activity or would cause unwarranted invasion of privacy. However, the Justice Srikrishna Committee has proposed an amendment that would broaden the definition of ‘harm’, restricting disclosure of personal information even where it may be clearly linked to some public activity.

The Central and State Information Commissions have been functioning with less than their prescribed maximum strength of eleven because governments have dragged their feet on appointing commissioners. For instance, the Central Information Commission (CIC), currently having seven members, will have only three by the end of the year if no appointments are made. This leads to delay in disposal of cases, which is compounded by the backlog in the High Courts, where a number of decisions of the commission are challenged. This happens invariably in cases concerning the high and the mighty. For example, the CIC’s decision in 2007 to cover Indraprastha Gas Ltd. under the Act was stayed by the Delhi High Court, and the stay continues to operate.

Clogging of the system

The clogging of the RTI system is also because a number of applicants, usually disgruntled employees of public institutions, ask frivolous queries. Their applications have unfortunately continued to exist alongside those of numerous RTI activists who have done commendable work, often risking their life and limb.

Further, Section 4 of the RTI Act requires suo motu disclosure of a lot of information by each public authority. However, such disclosures have remained less than satisfactory. Thus, the CIC has had to repeatedly direct regulators of the banking sector to disclose information on the wrongdoings of banks, so as to enable the public to make informed choices about their dealings with various banks.

In one case, the CIC had to direct the disclosure of the list of private persons who travelled with the Prime Minister, at government expense, during his foreign visits. Such information should have been disclosed suo motu by the government.

The RTI Act continues to render yeoman service in providing information to citizens. Though its aim is not to create a grievance redressal mechanism, the notices from Information Commissions often spur the public authorities to redress grievances.

Thirteen years of the Act’s functioning have given us enough experience to hold a public debate on making it more effective. However, if the issues listed above are not addressed, this sunshine law will lose its promise, particularly in terms of ensuring transparency at higher levels of governance.

The author is a former diplomat and a former Central Information Commissioner. Views expressed are personal

Source: The Hindu, 16/10/2018

The right to privacy vs right to information

Finding the right regulatory structure is important in order to ensure that the two rights don’t come into conflict

Recently, information commissioner Sridhar Acharyulu, in an attempt to save the right to information (RTI) from dilution, cautioned against amending the RTI Act while implementing the data protection framework suggested by the Srikrishna Committee report.

The public focus so far has been on the conceptualization of personal data, consent fatigue and data localization. But the report raises a crucial question. What would be the mandate of the future data protection authority (DPA) it envisages? And how would the mandate be reconciled with that of the information commissioner? This concern becomes particularly relevant due to a history of bureaucratic conflict in various countries stemming from the tension between the discordant mandates of the two authorities.

Conceptually, RTI and the right to privacy are both complementary and in conflict. While RTI increases access to information, the right to privacy veils it instead. At the same time, they both function as citizen rights safeguarding liberty against state overreach. There are two possible frameworks for managing this tension.

A TWO-BODY MODEL

In most jurisdictions, the information commission and privacy commission are separate and distinct bodies. In a few countries, however, the RTI commission is a single-function body responsible for balancing competing interests. These jurisdictions include Hungary, Mexico and the UK.

Countries which have two commissions are able to champion both these rights distinctively. This is because they are unencumbered by the onerous task of balancing competing interests. However, this clarity of mandate and authority comes with a price tag. Disagreements between the two authorities can heighten transaction and opportunity costs involved in reconciliation, reducing overall efficiency in grievance redressal.

Canada has witnessed public tension between the two commissions due to politics and policy concerns. These concerns include delineating the extent to which a request to access “personal” information may be granted without undermining privacy. A Canadian task force reviewing its two-body model acknowledged the confusion arising out of conflicting recommendations. For instance, the two bodies could have conflicting opinions on whether educational records of public officials or asset records of spouses of public officials constitute “personal data” shielded from RTI requests.

A SINGLE-BODY MODEL

Adopting a single commission (as in the UK) instead would remove the transaction costs associated with conflict between two commissions. This would increase administrative efficiency and, in turn, public welfare. However, the possibility of a conflict between the two competing rights may end up prejudicing the authority in favour of one of them, endangering their intended harmonization. Moreover, additional mandates may over-burden the authority and undermine its efficacy, reducing social welfare instead.

ONE BODY OR TWO FOR INDIA?

The Supreme Court of India, while declaring the right to privacy as a fundamental right in Justice K. S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) and Anr. vs Union Of India and Ors, missed out on defining its contours with respect to the right to information. The Srikrishna Committee Report, while acknowledging that most commentators are in favour of an independent data protection authority, falls short of explaining the rationale behind it. These missed opportunities are regrettable. That said, the optimal solution for India is indeed two independent bodies.

While the cost-effectiveness of a single body model is attractive, in the Indian context, it may have a number of drawbacks. These include high levels of corruption that could encourage conflict of interest and a tendency to safeguard personal gains.

Moreover, there might be another kind of mismatch in giving an information commissioner the mandate of enforcing a data protection law. The information commissioner’s mandate is concerned with personal data only of public officials and not of citizens at large. The enforcement of a data protection law, on the other hand, would require familiarization with, and expertise in, a far broader mandate. Achieving these may require a structural overhaul of the commission, which could prejudice the existing regime. A body with specialized expertise in this field would be far more suited to serve this purpose.

We admit that there may be some agency costs involved in reconciling conflicts between the information commissioner and the DPA. However, these costs would not override the larger public interest served by ensuring the independence of a DPA. This is because the agency costs would be relatively small compared to the harm arising out of a prejudice to either of these rights.

Furthermore, a single commission may lean towards hierarchizing the enforcement of RTI over the realization of privacy. This fear arises from the false perception that a dichotomy exists between privacy and welfare. This perception is based on public attitudes that question the relevance of privacy within the Indian sociopolitical climate as opposed to RTI, which is looked upon more favourably.

Source: Livemint epaper, 29/08/2018

Steady rise in RTI pleas rejected by CIC

Himanshi Dhawan

New Delhi





Activists Say Move A Ploy To Cut Pendency

Central Information Commission (CIC) returned over 150 cases every day in November over technical defects. There has also been a steady increase in the number of appeals being rejected, from 209 in August to 4,928 in November. In December, the RTI watchdog has returned over 1,492 cases. This is a far cry from an average of 600-650 rejections earlier this year (January-April).The applications have been returned under Section 9 of the RTI Act, which says that a plea “may'' be rejected for lack of information. RTI activists have cried foul at this approach to refuse appeals and complaints saying it is eroding people's faith in the commission.
Initially, the CIC had begun returning petitions following a court order which ruled that applicants must provide photo identity cards. However, after an uproar, the commission reversed its stand and said it would not seek photo identification to register an appeal. In fact, the government even assured Parliament on this count. Despite this, the number of returned cases continues to be high.
“This calculated move to reduce pendency through a statistical approach rather than a humane one has only succeeded in eroding people's faith in the commission,'' Venkatesh Nayak of Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) said.He added that the matter of returned RTI applications was discussed threadbare when the activist, along with members from the National Campaign for People's Right to Information (NCPRI), met the chief information commissioner in November. “We had pointed out that huge expenditure was incurred in returning applications and suggested that the defects may be corrected at the hearing stage,'' Nayak said.
Activist Commodore (retd) Lokesh Batra said he had sought a “defect list'' from the CIC. “The commission can just inform the applicant if one or two documents are not there. It is unfair to reject the whole application,'' he said.
According to government data, 1.54 lakh RTI applications were pending with various public authorities as on September 30.This year, 376,435 applications were received of which 25,792 were rejected.
In 2012-13, 886,681 RTI applications were received by various public authorities of which, 62,231 were rejected while in 2013-14, 962,630 applications were received of which 60,127 were rejected.In 2014-15, 845,032 were received with 63,351 of them being rejected.

Source: Times of India, 29-12-2015

University to offer certificate course on RTI from January

Ankita Bhatkhande TWEETS @ankitab_MIRROR





In a move that might be probably the first of its kind in the country, Mumbai University's department of civics and politics is going to start a full time certificate course on Right to Information. Starting this January, the course aims to train and educate people on the act, which came into effect from 2005 and has just completed ten years.The classes for the course will be conducted on weekends. The only criterion for enrolment is a graduation in any subject. The course promises to offer theoretical basis for the act itself and the legalities aroundthe same while also offering a praxis based training about filing an RTI, asking the right questions, understanding the exemptions under the act.
“At a time when people are becoming increasingly aware of the act, we need to take one step forward and facilitate the best possible participation of people to ensure transparency in the working of governmental, semi governmental and autono mous organisations,“ said Dr Surendra Jondhale, head of department of civics and politics.
The course is open to anyone who is interested. “The law is a breakthrough revolution for ensuring people's participation in the democracy.While we want to encourage more and more people to be actively involved in the process, we also want to warn and educate them about the whole historical and theoretical context of such a provision in a democracy like ours. We have also kept it open to bureaucrats to train them more effectively in giving the information,“ said Dr Mrudul Nile, associate professor of politics at the department and the course coordinator.
The department plans to invite several activists from the city working in varied fields like education, health, transport, governance, environment etc as guest lecturers who will also share their experiences as case studies with the students. Right to Information activist and former Chief Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi said that this is a laudable initiative by the university.“I am hoping that the course not only educates and trains people, but also empowers them by telling them what they can do as citizens by filing a simple application“.

Holding power to account

Ten years of implementation of the Right to Information Act has spawned a new breed of activism and citizenship

The Right to Information (RTI) Act has completed 10 years of implementation. According to a conservative estimate based on the Information Commission’s annual reports, there are at least 50 lakh RTI applications filed in India every year. The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative used the data to estimate that just under 1 per cent of the electorate uses the RTI every year. Over the last decade, at least 2 per cent of the Indian population has used the law. For a law that requires proactive initiative, those are extraordinarily high numbers.

Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey

Despite all our justified complaining about poor implementation, bureaucratic resistance, interference, absence of political and administrative support, threats against users, and attempts at dilution, people have fiercely owned the law like no other. They have defended it against every attack and put it to sustained use.

Popularity of RTI

Many people have tried to understand why the RTI has become so popular in India. Why does use of the law continue to spread despite the odds stacked against the users and applicants? What converts individuals into users and users into activists? In the unequal battle of trying to hold power to account, perhaps it is the real empowerment and sense of hope that the RTI offers to every citizen.

People need to hope. About two decades ago, writer Arundhati Roy made a passing comment on why peddlers of salvation, despite their unattainable promises, attract so many people. They actually peddle hope. We want to be reassured that we can do something to set things right. Bollywood films with happy endings, where the single and determined fighter takes on all that is evil, are not only three-hour escapades but indicators of our need to hope. The human desire for dignity, equality, public ethics, and the capacity to enforce these even to some extent needs an outlet. RTI, in many ways, offers that measure of hope.

In the world of democratic politics, people face the bleak scenario of political, economic and social promises being twisted to serve personal profit. Occasionally an election re-infuses great hope. But political leadership apart, the long march of attempting to make constitutional promises of equality and liberty is part of the daily survival of millions of Indians. People struggle every day to establish some reason in dealings in public life with assertions of citizenship, entitlements, and ethics. Discussions and deliberations within such groups and collectives gave birth to the process and principles of the RTI movement. The genesis of the RTI addressed issues of constitutional rights: empowering individuals and collectives to demand answers from a corrupt government.

In 1996, a lawyer, who casually dropped in to talk at the first large RTI dharna in Beawar in central Rajasthan, said, “This is a great cause and issue, but let’s forget about ever getting the law. No corrupt system is going to expose its rotten core.” Let us imagine for a moment that he was proved right, that India had not passed a strong RTI law a decade ago. How different would things be?

The RTI is a law that has spawned a new breed of activism and citizenship. RTI enthusiasts do not only file RTI applications; they also spend countless hours debating sections, cases, applications, and answers. These are ordinary people who have suddenly become obsessed and even possessive about their particular connection to this law. They are RTI’s foot soldiers and, at the same time, its generals, who have used the law to shake India’s officialdom by its roots.

Questioning authority

A decade gives us an opportunity to see what RTI is doing to the much larger processes of change. These are matters not of law, but of culture, of equations of power, and of unquestioned norms. It is very rare that one gets an opportunity to not just ask a question but change the basis of questioning. Without specifically attempting to change relationships in society, the RTI has begun to do just that. Without debating the hierarchies of who can ask questions and who must provide answers, the Act has begun to encourage a culture of asking questions. We are far from being an open society, but the RTI is opening our minds to what such a society might be.

It’s not often that one can see the impact of a law in terms of its social and philosophical implications. The RTI is a process of dismantling illegitimate concentrations of power. We can expose the lies and the cheating, not merely in monetary terms, but unravel the promotion of conflict and exploitation of the poor.

The RTI is messy, untidy, incomplete, and, of course, imperfect. But that is its strength: it acknowledges contention and builds its own theory of relativity. There are many perspectives on each issue. The RTI provides a platform for each view to engage with the other on the basis of a shared logic. It can help us escape from policy paralysis, and build a more informed, equitable and robust decision-making process.

A bureaucrat friend, not particularly enamoured by the RTI, reluctantly conceded to us, “There is one thing I must acknowledge — when any government servant picks up a pen to write on a file, he or she has RTI on their mind. This is one of the best forms of deterrence against wrongdoing we can have.” That was an acknowledgment of incredible universal impact covering everyone at all times. If we want to usher in a paradigm of transparency, it is clear that bureaucrats must have the friendly ghost of the RTI implanted in their psyche. And that is how cultural change begins. As RTI users, we often say that the RTI helps change the mindsets of those asking the questions as well, because the same standards must obviously apply. More importantly, it is very likely that anyone posing a challenge will invite one to themselves — and just a willingness to be prepared for such a situation means that an ethos of questioning is taking birth.

It is widely acknowledged that we are becoming a consumer-oriented, competitive society. In fact our capitalist framework seems to encourage it. Should we not also acknowledge other forces in society that are encouraging us to demand answers of the powerful, use truth as a basis of demand for change, and provide tools that strengthen the weak and make the strong accountable?

Let’s imagine for a moment that India had not passed the RTI a decade ago. What would it be like today? Not just a less accountable, more corrupt, opaque government, but also a far more discouraging and despairing country. Despite what the sceptic said in Beawar 20 years ago, India has passed a strong RTI law. The people of Beawar held a meeting to celebrate ten years of the RTI, and said they had not dreamt how far this would go in 20 years. Subsequently, the Municipal Corporation of Beawar passed a unanimous resolution to build a memorial at the spot at Chang Gate where the 40-day dharna took place in 1996, launching the RTI movement in India. Its foundation stone was laid on October 13 this year. To have a city celebrate a law and identify itself with it is a sign of strong and sustained citizen activism. To have that sense of ownership spread across the country should give the Indian citizen some hope of what the next ten years might bring.

(Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey are social activists and members of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan and the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information.)

Keywords: Right to Information Act, Central Information Commission, What is RTI, RTI movement in India, role of RTI in democracy

Source: The Hindu, 20-11-2015

Oct 22 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

Ministries to put up RTI replies online from Oct 31

New Delhi TIMES NEWS NETWORK





Taking transparency to another level, the Narendra Modi government on Tuesday directed all its ministries and departments to suo motu display Right to Information (RTI) applications and responses thereof, on their respective websites from October 31.However, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) instructions in this regard do leave scope for withholding RTI replies that contain personal information relating to an individual.“It may be noted that RTI applications and appeals received and their responses relating to the personal information of an individual may not be disclosed if they do not serve any public interest,“ said the DoPT note, which was circulated to all Union ministries and departments on Tuesday .
To facilitate uploading of RTI applications and appeals received and their responses on the website, a new feature has been added to the CPIO FAA module on the `RTI Online' portal on pilot basis for DoPT. Through this feature, an option is given to the central public information officers (CPIO) and first appellate authority (FAA) to upload the reply to RTI query and the first appeal respectively on to the department's website. This particular fea ture will now be extended to other ministries and departments as well. To display the RTI applications received in the ministry or department and the reply given using this feature, web services will be provided through a URL to each ministry or department by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) or Department of Personnel and Training “The concerned ministry or department needs to consume this web service (by writing a program) to display the desired contest on its respective website,“ the DoPT note said while asking the ministries and departments to take the help of NIC or DoPT experts in this regard.
“An immediate action is requested so that the facility to upload the reply to RTI application and first appeal respectively on the website of the respective ministry or department may be started with effect from October 31, 2014,“ the DoPT directed.

Jul 08 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

66,000 RTI complaints pending in 6 info panels

Anahita Mukherji





The aam aadmi’s favourite law, the Right to Information Act, turns nine this year.Information commissions were set up to decide on complaints and appeals filed by people against government authorities for blocking access to information. How have they performed? At present, over 66,000 complaints and appeals are pending at six information commissions.
Maharashtra tops the list with 34,158, followed by the Central Information Commission (CIC; Delhi). Kerala, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Jammu & Kashmir are next. The states are the only ones to provide pendency figures besides Sikkim and Tripura, which showed no pendency.
The findings are by the nonprofit Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI). The data raises questions about the composition of the commissions.
While much has been said about the need for more women in parliament, their representation
in the commissions is abysmal.Goa is the only state whose commission is headed by a woman.
A woman information commissioner in Tripura is serving as the acting chief information commissioner. Only 11 of 93 information commissioners in India were women as of May 2014.
Ironically, there are transparency issues as well. A former direc
tor of the Intelligence Bureau now heads the CIC, the country's apex decision making body on RTI appeals. IB is one of the few organizations exempt from providing information under RTI, except in cases of corruption and human rights violation.“The problem with a former IB director heading the CIC is that such an individual has no experience of embedding transparency in administration. The RTI is pathbreaking because it aims to replace a regime of secrecy with one of transparency . But IB has deliberately been kept out of RTI purview.
Will a person with a background in IB be adequately able to champion transparency?“ asks RTI activist Venkatesh Nayak, who headed CHRI research on information commissions. That the vast majority of information commissioners are retired civil servants raises fears of the information commissions turning into a geriatric bureaucratic ward; 69% of CICs are retired IAS officers.
For the full report, log on to http://www.timesofindia.com 14% VACANT POSTS Maharashtra tops the list of pending complaints/ appeal with 34,158 90% of information commissions continue to be headed by retired civil servants, Jharkhand being the lone exception, whose commission is headed by a retired HC judge Goa is the only state with a woman chief information commissioner 14% of posts of info comissioners lying vacant