RTI Awards 2010

If an officer denies information under RTI Act because he has done something wrong and wants to hide something it is understandable. However, a large number of officers are rejecting information, not because they have something to hide but because they are culturally oriented to say “No”. Often, one comes across officers who would say “Why should I give information to him? Why is he asking information? What will he do with this information? Who is he to question me?” These questions are reflective of a mindset in which our bureaucracy has been working for decades. They are simply not used to being questioned by the public.

The RTI Awards were therefore instituted in the year 2009 to encourage officers to think and act positively while dealing with RTI requests.

Likewise, RTI Awards seeks to comparatively assess the performance of all Information Commissioners so that best practices could be highlighted. During 2009, we studied 51,128 orders passed by various Information Commissions during the calendar year 2008 and received feedback from 8,400 appellants. The performance of each commissioner was studied in great detail in terms of his disposals and pendencies, pro-disclosure attitude, compliance of his orders, deterrence impact and satisfaction ratio. The study revealed a highly uneven implementation of RTI Act across the country. It provides an opportunity to collectively address deficiencies in RTI implementation.

The award was instituted in three categories in the year 2009- Best Information Commissioner (to felicitate an information commissioner who has enabled access to correct and complete information to maximum appellants and strictly enforced the RTI Act); Best Public Information Officer (to felicitate information officers who have provided complete and correct information in maximum number of RTI applications within the prescribed time limit) and Best RTI Citizen (to felicitate those citizens who created maximum public impact by using RTI Act).

This year another category has been added to the award- Best RTI Journalist (to felicitate a journalist who has filed RTI applications himself/herself and used the information obtained for reporting issues of public importance).

We are encouraged to see the response to RTI Awards and its impact in the very first year. We received phone calls from large number of officers across the country on our methodology and parameters for Public Information Officers. Some of them said – “From now on, we will try and satisfy every RTI applicant.” Likewise, it also generated a lot of interest amongst many information commissioners and citizens.

Congratulations to the winners of 2009! We hope their work would inspire others to emulate them.
Our best wishes to the nominees of RTI Awards 2010!