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Monday, April 10, 2006

How about this - personal responsibility for making FOI work

India is taking FOI compliance seriously. Its Right to Information Act which came into effect in October last year requires each agency to designate a Public Information Officer who carries some personal responsibility for compliance. Section 20 of the Act provides that where, in the course of deciding a complaint or appeal the Information Commission finds that a PIO has failed to provide access (without reasonable cause) or "malafidely" denied a request, knowingly gave incorrect or misleading information, destroyed information, or obstructed furnishing information, a penalty of 250 rupees (about $A7.70) per day may be imposed with a cap of 25,000 rupees.

The search goes on to find the answer to making FOI work in practice to achieve its objectives: what price the Indian solution to this vexed question?

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