Online Filing of Complaints and Appeals with Central Information Commission

1. Online Filing of Complaints and Appeals with Central Information Commission http://rti.india.gov.in CIC/NIC

2. Objective To facilitate transparency & accountability of information dissemination to the citizens through e-Governance as required by Right to Information (RTI) Act….!!! CIC/NIC

3. Background • 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

4. 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 cases CIC/NIC

5. Coverage/Scope • 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

6. Stake Holders • 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 Sideare • 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

7. 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

8. Conceptual View Central Information Commission (Adjudicators) Citizen & Civil Society Organization (Demand Side) Public Authorities (Supply Side) CIC Online CIC/NIC

9. IDDI Framework CIC/NIC

10. Process Workflow CIC/NIC

11. Best Practices/ Features • 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

12. Best Practices/ Innovation • 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

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 CIC/NIC

14. Services to Citizens • 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

15. Status Tracking CIC/NIC

16. Cause List CIC/NIC

17. Services for CIC • 12 stage life cycle based Work Flow system: • Signed copy awaited • Assigned to designated officer • Under Scrutiny Process • Comments sought from PA • Comments received from PA • Date of Hearing Scheduled • Decision announced • Direction Points • Compliance awaited • Orders/Decision complied • Due for Consignment to Record Room • File Consigned to Record Room CIC/NIC

18. Workflow at CIC CIC/NIC

19. 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 CIC/NIC

20. 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

21. 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

22. Impact of CIC Online CIC/NIC

23. Role Based Users • 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

24. Trend Analysis 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 EducationThe 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 CIC/NIC

26. Impact of CIC Online • 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

27. 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

28. Future Plan • 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

29. 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 Thank You for your kind attention CIC/NIC