RTI Guide

Purpose:

To effectively use RTI act, a steep learning curve is there. In addition, identifying the Public Information Officer for the relevant department is not an easy job for common man. The online portal will extend the reach of 5thpillar by allowing public to file RTI requests online from anywhere in the world and get the updates in a time bound manner. All such online RTI requests submitted through the portal will be verified by the 5thpillar staff for correctness, forwarded to the appropriate Government departments in offline mode through post on behalf of the requester. The responses received will be updated back to the portal. A nominal user charge will be levied by 5thpillar to provide this service. The extra money made from this service will be used to conduct awareness campaigns and provide assistance to destitute people with the aid of RTI.

Scope:

The document describes the technical and functional requirements of RTI online portal.

Definitions:

RTI Online - the name of the portal which facilitates online submission of RTI requests through 5thpillar website.

Functional Requirements:

The basic issues are security, traceability, confidentiality and genuineness of the requests. This will be followed by a brief outline of the portal like the user registration screens and RTI application and status update screens and payment related screens.

Genuineness:

To ensure that every RTI request submitted through the 5thpillar portal is genuine, the requester must register with the 5thpillar website first. To ensure that registration in 5thpillar website is simple for first time visitors, there will be a two stage registration. Stage 1 registration does not require any documentary proof. Stage1 registered user will be allowed to participate in the 5thpillar websites discussions/mailing lists etc.. Only people who have completed Stage 2 registration by providing proof of residence and authorized by 5thpillar staff will be allowed to make RTI requests online.

The information collected as part of the two stage registration is given below:

Name of the applicant : (Stage 1)

Date of Birth : (Stage 1)

Gender : Male / Female : (Stage 1)

Father’s Full Name :

Mother’s Full Name :

Communication Address with PIN Code : (Stage 1)

Telephone Number

Residential : (Stage 1)

Office : (Stage 1)

Mobile No. : (Stage 1)

Permanent address with PIN Code :

Telephone : (Stage 1)

Mobile No. :(Stage 1)

E.mail I.D. : (Stage 1)

Proof of Residence :

(Ration Card Voter Identification Card Passport / Driving License) Number: (Stage 2)

(Submission of photocopy) :(Stage 2)

Confidentiality:

To ensure that the information provided as part of the two stage registration is not misused accidentally or willfully, all the personal identification information i.e Stage 2 information must be stored electronically in encrypted format only. All the online RTI  requests must have an option to keep the specific request/outcome as a confidential information. This will ensure that personal and sensitive information is not accidentally made available over the Internet. A requester must be able to change the confidentiality option at all the times.

Traceability:

All RTI requests submitted successfully must have an unique reference number to track the request. The portal must allow all the registered users to search and view the RTI requests in the system, as long as the they are not marked as confidential.

Security:

Since there need to be a payment system involved, it is better to secure the entire RTI online portal with 128bit encryption. There is also need to tie-up with a payment gateway system who charge minimum amount for the payment service provided. Possibly the existing tie-up with Pay pal can be used for requests submitted by NRI’s. If there is a need, then one of the India based payment gateway service provider’s service can be utilised.

Technical Architecture:

The technology architecture used in the portal will be documented here. Information ranging from the software platform, security policy and security architecture details, payment gateway interface details will be listed here.

Financial Aspects:

Since RTI online involves collecting money from the users, proper accounting and book keeping procedures needs to be devised. Since 5thpillar is already collecting donations, the existing procedures will be used for this online portal too.