Guidelines on RTI Internship for 2014

Guidelines on RTI Internship for 2014

F. No 14/9/2014-IR
Ministry of Personnel, PG and Pensions
Department of Personnel and Training

North Block, New Delhi-110001
Dated : 10th November,2014.

Office Memorandum

Subject: Guidelines on Internship for Undergraduates pursuing five year integrated course in Law or graduates pursuing Bachelor’s degree in Law under the Centrally sponsored Scheme on “Improving Transparency and Accountability in government through effective implementation of Right to Information Act”

1.0 Introduction

The Department of Personnel and Training (DOPT), Ministry of Personnel Public Grievances and Pensions, Government of India, is the nodal Ministry for the Right to Information Act. It is administering a Plan scheme titled ‘Improving Transparency and Accountability in Government through effective implementation of the Right to Information Act’. The primary goal of the scheme is to contribute towards more accountable and transparent government and it has several components including programmes for awareness generation, training and e-governance initiatives for RTI for achieving the purpose.

Department of Personnel and Training has been conducting Internship Programme for the Ministries and Departments in the Government of India, which is beneficial both to the Departments and the interns. This will help the Ministry/ Department consolidate and document its experience in the implementation of RTI, its successes, constraints in implementation, identify the areas which need more attention, address the gap areas and suggest what more needs to be done to help achieve the objectives of the Act. The interns would be familiarized with the process of seeking information and enabling access to information under the RTI regime.

Under the scheme, DOPT is offering short-term internships to Undergraduates who are in the second year pursuing five year integrated course in Law or graduates in the first year pursuing three year graduation course in Law from a recognised and reputed University to conduct an analysis of RTI Applications in select public authorities.

2.0 Areas of Study and Research Output
The RTI Internship is being offered to analyze a sample of the RTI applications received in the calendar year 2014 by select public authorities. The analysis of the applications would aim to get an overall picture of the applications received and do an in-depth study of the information sought and the response by the CPIO/ Public Authority. Templates of the expected outputs are enclosed. Template I covers the preliminary analysis of the Public Authority while Template II covers the detailed analysis of the selected RTI applications. The interns would also study the status of suo motu disclosure of the Ministry/Department allotted to them for their internship and would submit a report in this regard, as per the guidelines mentioned at Annexure I.
3.0 Guidelines/ Salient Features of the Internship Programme

Duration • The internships would be for duration of one month starting 1st December, 2014 onwards.
• The internship programme is neither a job nor any such assurance for a job in the Department of Personnel of Training or any other Ministry/ Department in Government,
Remuneration Travel costs of interns will be reimbursed on actual basis up to Rs.5000/- on submission of reports.
Logistic Support Interns will be provided with the necessary logistics support i.e, office space and photocopy facility.
Submission of Paper The Interns will be required to submit to the Department of Personnel and Training and the selected Ministry/ Department a report on the Areas of study as detailed above.
Placement The Interns will be placed in selected Ministries/ Departments
Certificate of internship Certificates will be issued on satisfactory completion of their internships and on submission of their Reports

4.0 Methodology

a) The Department of Personnel and Training will coordinate with the selected Public Authorities for the internship programme.
b) An initiation workshop will be held for the interns at the beginning of the internship. The work of the interns will be monitored through weekly interactions with the interns by the Department of Personnel and Training.
c) The interns will be allotted to selected Public Authorities. The interns will report to a nodal officer of the selected Public Authority. The interns will spend 2(two) weeks to study and analyze the RTI applications and one week to study the status of suo motu disclosure of the Ministry/Department concerned. The last week would be devoted to writing the report.
d) The interns will be required to study the applications received by atleast 5 CPIOs within the public authority which receive the maximum applications. They will be required to select randomly 20 applications( which are not older than 6 months) from each CPIO for study.
e) Copies of all RTI applications analysed will be submitted to DOPT alongwith the report. A soft copy of the templates and report on suo motu disclosure has to be submitted to the email id usir-dopt@nic.in by 28th February, 2015 Non submission of either will be treated as an incomplete report.

(Sandeep Jain)
Director (IR)
Tel No. 23092755
e-mail osdrti-dopt@nic.in

source-http://ccis.nic.in/WriteReadData/CircularPortal/D2/D02rti/14_9_2014-IR-10112014.pdf