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….!!!

CIC/NIC 2

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

CIC/NIC 5

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)

CIC/NIC 6

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)

CIC/NIC 7

Stake Holders

CIC/NIC 8

Conceptual View

Central Information Commission

(Adjudicators)

CIC Online

Citizen & Civil Society Organization

(Demand Side)

Public Authorities

(Supply Side)

CIC/NIC 9

IDDI Framework

CIC/NIC 10

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

CIC/NIC 11

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.

CIC/NIC 12

Best Practices/ Innovation

CIC/NIC 13

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

CIC/NIC 14

Services to Citizens

CIC/NIC 15

Status Tracking

CIC/NIC 16

Cause List

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

CIC/NIC 17

Services for CIC

CIC/NIC 18

Workflow at 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

CIC/NIC 19

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)

CIC/NIC 20

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

CIC/NIC 21

Services for CIC

CIC/NIC 22

Impact of CIC Online

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

CIC/NIC 23

Role Based Users

CIC/NIC 24

Trend Analysis

July '08

Augu

st '08

Septem

ber '08

Octobe

r '08

Novembe

r '08

Decembe

r '08

Janua

ry '09

Februa

ry '09

March '

09

April

'09

May '0

9

June '

09July

'09

Augu

st '09

-

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

500

Trend Analysis of Online PetitionsNu

mbe

r of P

etiti

ons

CIC/NIC 25

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 <rajeevkumar.cse@gmail.com> , 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

CIC/NIC 26

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

CIC/NIC 28

Future Plan

CIC/NIC 29

Thank You for your kind attention

Besides Simplifying the life of Petitioner, bringing in a lot of efficiency and

transparency

‘CIC Online’ System shall facilitate understanding issues

of core governance & help addressing them