Department of Personnel and Training disclosing ‘incomplete’ information under RTI: Report

NEW DELHI: The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), the nodal department for Right to Information Act, is itself not disclosing information as laid down under the transparency law, an independent audit has found.

The third-party audit was conducted by the Indian Institute of Public Administration at DoPT’s request. The audit, a copy of which has been seen by ET, says that the information being disclosed voluntarily by the department is “incomplete” and “inadequate”.

Under Section 4 of RTI Act, every government department and ministry is required to voluntarily disclose information regularly and update it periodically. DoPT itself Nidhi.Sharma laid down suo motu disclosure guidelines for all ministries and departments to follow.

However, according to the audit report, “The disclosure of 17 categories of information under Section 4 (1) (b) of the RTI Act is incomplete and partial. Information is not being updated regularly. Thus, updation of information is a major issue with proactive disclosure of information by DoPT as well. ”

The audit report says information being provided by DoPT is in a technical manner which “needs simplification from user’s perspective”.

The transparency law also mandates that along with English, the information being disclosed should be in Hindi and one other vernacular language.

“But at present the information under proactive disclosure is mostly available in English,” the report says.

The department has not even disclosed a list of the information that it has digitally disclosed and what is available in printed format. For the purpose of audit, the IIPA scrutinised the disclosure of information on the DoPT site, other published documents and interacted with the officials associated with the implementation of RTI.