Online Filing of
Complaints and Appeals with
Central Information Commissionhttp://rti.india.gov.in
1CIC/NIC
To facilitate transparency & accountability of information dissemination to the citizens
through e-Governance as required by
Right to Information (RTI) Act….!!!
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Objective
RTI Act is for setting out the practical regime and promote transparency
The Commission has thus an original and appellate jurisdiction under the RTI Act
Commission can direct the PA to amend its rules, impose penalties, award compensation, declare an authority to be a PA under RTI Act
The CIC/SIC is required to prepare the report which inter alia contains recommendations for reform, including recommendations for the development, improvement, modernisation, reform or common law CIC/NIC 3
Background
Commission on an average receives over 1000 complaints & over 900 second appeals per month
Processing of these petitions require multi-level referencing and dialogue with Ministries/ Departments/ Public Authorities besides establishing dialogue with the petitioners
Petitioners often pay visits and make telephone calls to the Commission with a view to know status of their casesCIC/NIC 4
Background
An ICT Interface through an exclusive Portal qualitatively improves the accessibility to the Commission by the Stakeholders across the globe
Indian Citizens (Urban & Rural as well as NRIs)
Integration of web base input with a structured CIC workflow helps the citizens to trace the status of their complaints/appeals on a real time basis from anywhere
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Coverage/Scope
Stake holders at the Demand Side are Information Seekers (around 0.47 million of RTI with the CPAs during 2008-09)
Stake holders at the Supply Side are Nodal Authority,
Public Authorities and Public Information Officers under the jurisdiction of Central Government (Around 1500 CPAs all over India as reported during 2008-09)
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Stake Holders
It is also relied upon by the Commission to compile various data sets, analyze them and generate reports as needed
Central/ State Information Commissions and the Appellate Authorities are stake holders as Adjudicators ( 28 State Commissions)
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Stake Holders
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Conceptual View
Central Information Commission
(Adjudicators)
CIC Online
Citizen & Civil Society Organization
(Demand Side)
Public Authorities
(Supply Side)
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Process WorkflowNational Portal of India
RTI Complaint and Appeal Module
http://rti.india.gov.in
2nd AppealComplaint
Central Information Commission
Receipt & Despatch
Designated Officers
System Administrator
Available User Roles:- Receipt & Dispatch (R&D)- Designated Officers (DO)- CIC/ICs and their PPSs (CIC/IC)- System Administrator (SA)
By default a complaint/appeal received with DO will be assigned
the status as “Under Scrutiny Process". The
status gets changed automatically according to the steps taken by the
DO
By default a complaint/appeal will be assigned the status as “Signed copy awaited"
If necessary, the DO will seek comments from the Public Authority
Either on receiving comments from the Public Authority DO or no response within specified
time period the DO would proceed further
- Status would be assigned accordingly
- Until the date & time of hearing are indicated, it will be treated as
“Pending with CIC/IC”
- DO will take date of hearing from CIC/IC and assign the date of hearing, send automated
mail notice to PA and petitioner. - DO can reassign multiple date and time of
hearing as and when the hearing gets postponed. Venue and hearing through VC is
also being assigned here
Various possible outcomes of decisions will have to be recorded by
DO or CIC/IC’s and the decision will be uploaded for public view
At this stage the status will be assigned as “Decissions
Announced”
At this stage the status will be assigned as “Date of Hearing Fixed”
with showing all other details viz. time, venue, VC or physical
appearance etc.
DO will record various direction points mentioned in the Decision
Alerts will be generated from the software so as to enable the DO to ensure the compliance
within the time stipulated in the Decision
At this stage the status will be assigned as “Direction Points”
At this stage the status will be assigned as “Compliance Awaited”
Compliance on various Decision points will be recorded
DO will take the approval of Secretary/Registrar to begin the process of consigning
the file to Record Room as per provisions
Secretary will Order to send the
file to Record Room
At this stage the status will be assigned as “Orders/Decisions
complied”
At this stage the status will be assigned as “Due for Consignment
to Record Room”
At this stage the status will be assigned as “File Consigned to
record Room”
In case, the complaint/appeal is not actually related to the particular IC he/she may laterally forward that to the
correct IC. Convert Appeal to Complaint and vice-versa. He/She can
further scrutiny on following parameters:
1. Infrutuous Entry2. Return if out side purview of CIC/RTI3. Forward to appropriate authority4. Further document sought from petitioner5. Admit or not admit depending on the merit of the petition
On receipt of signed copy from the Complainant/appellant the R&D will
forward the complaint/appeal to the DO with comments, if reqd. He/she would mark it as received online or offline.
The direction points could be:1. Petition Dismissed 2. Concerned parties Remanded3. Petition withdrawn by the petitioner4. Complaint/Appeal allowed (There are 10 different direction in accordance with the Act for compliance within time)5. Complaint/Appeal Partially allowed
Diminished Costs and minimized time:The stages above effectively address the cost and time issues of the RTI Complaint & Appeal Legacy system
Single window Access to all information relating to registered RTI Complaints and Appeals
Completely Web based…..easy to use
Facility to submit complaint & appeal in draft stage to complete it subsequently
Role based Access & privileges Anytime, Anywhere Access to all stakeholders Resource & Effort optimization at CIC Logging of entire Activity System Performance Reports End to end solution
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Best Practices/ Features
Enables users to access system, irrespective of:– Browser– Assistive technology– Device– Disability
Accessibility caters to citizens who are differently abled viz.:
– Visually challenged– Hearing – Mobility – Etc.
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Best Practices/ Innovation
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Legal Compliance Guidelines for the Indian Government Web Sites W3C ‘Web Content Accessibility Guidelines’
(WCAG) 2.0 Third Party Security Audit Bi-lingual Version
Thus making it
Usable & Universally Accessible Portal
Online Submission of Complaints & 2nd Appeals to CIC
Allocation of a unique number to each Complaint & Appeals
Online Tracking of the Status of their petitions
Online Access to Decisions of CIC & Cause Lists
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Services to Citizens
12 stage life cycle based Work Flow system:1. Signed copy awaited2. Assigned to designated officer3. Under Scrutiny Process4. Comments sought from PA5. Comments received from PA6. Date of Hearing Scheduled7. Decision announced8. Direction Points9. Compliance awaited10. Orders/Decision complied11. Due for Consignment to Record
Room12. File Consigned to Record Room
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Services for CIC
Stage 1 to 6 is the pendency indicator of the cases filed before the Commission
Stage 8 and its various sub stages are the measures of RTI implementation as assessed by the Commission
Stage 9 to 10 is the compliance indicator of the decided cases for the Commission
Stage 11 to 12 is the measure of record management practices of the case documents in the Commission
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Services for CIC
Scrutiny of a case results either into admission of the petition or no admission due to its being infructuous or not being in the jurisdiction of the Commission (Stage 3)
Direction Points have five possible sub items: dismissal, remand, withdraws, acceptance and part acceptance (Stage 8)
Acceptance and part acceptance of a case by the Commission necessitates the compliance requirement as monitoring process (Stage 8)
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Services for CIC
Demand based Auto generation of:
Letter of inviting comments from the Public Authorities/Complainants, Hearing Notices, Alerts for cases pending for compliance, Mails, Summons
Variety of Reports for Monitoring & Management Automated distribution of cases to individual registries
Inbuilt Role based login, activities and assignments
Preview of the progress made so far in a case before the CIC/ICs while deciding a matter
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Services for CIC
The Central Receipt Section
All the data entry operators
All the designated officers to scrutiny, to process and to monitor the cases
All the personal staff of the ICs/CIC for listing the hearing schedule
All the ICs/CIC
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Role Based Users
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Trend Analysis
July
'08
Augus
t '08
Sept
embe
r '08
Octob
er '0
8
Novem
ber '
08
Decem
ber '
08
Janu
ary
'09
Febr
uary
'09
March
'09
April
'09
May '0
9
June
'09
July
'09
Augus
t '09
-
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
500
Trend Analysis of Online Petitions
Num
ber
of
Peti
tions
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Feedbacks Recd.Thank you very much for providing an online submission of
appeals/complaints. While going through the pages, i did not found the following organization/public authority:Under Union Ministry : MHRDUnder Department : Higher Education
The following organization/Public Authorities are not available:Indian Institute of Technology, KharagpurIndian Institute of Technology, Roorkee
Rajeev Kumar <[email protected]> , Date: Tuesday, July 29, 2008 8:06 am
Thanks for the good design of website which can be used by DISABLED person also. Please let us know when ONLINE filing of RTI will be launched. Launching of ONLINE filing of RTI will be very useful and it will be like giving more power to the public and making all officials, politicians accountable for their duties. All the citizens of India will be very glad to see ONLINE filing of RTI, therefore kindly launch this facility at the earliest. Regards,Mahesh Rao
30% of the petitions have been filed online and
Witnessing an increasing trend (49.05%)
Saving of 30% personnel resources on account of data entry
Processing time for the disposal of the cases reduced by 35%
60% various special category petitions have been addressed as per their entitlements set by CIC
The quality of compliance has now improved due to details of stage 8 being captured
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Impact of CIC Online
The percentage pecuniary reduction in the processing of a case is completely eliminated and wrt time the same has reduced to 62.3%
Due to the present system in place time lag in preparing the Annual Report by the Commission is expected to be insignificant
RTI applications to know the status of their petitions in the commission has been completely eliminated..saving a lot of time of Commission CIC/NIC 27
Impact of CIC Online
Extension of the system to online recpt. of RTI Requests/First Appeals with single sign-on
Initiatives are being taken to replicate the system across all State Information Commissions
Single Sign on for RTI petitioners across the Country to be linked up with UID project (Initiative of the GOI)
National Database on RTI
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Future Plan