India has finally passed an information legislation, and much to the government’s credit, it has kept its promise of making the newly formulated Right to Information (RTI) Act participatory, progressive and meaningful. Now, however, is the time to move as efficiently and effectively as possible from a duty to furnish information regime to a duty to publish one....The RTI portal of the National Informatics Centre...could be the starting point for the move towards a participatory and proactive flow of information. According to the officials at the National Informatics Centre, the RTI portal has been set up to create a central repository of information for citizens to access information through a user-friendly search engine. An efficient and easy-to-use proactive disclosure system would provide many benefits to both government officials as well as the public. Instead of the work being wholly shouldered by the government, as it currently is, even private individuals can participate. This would not only reduce the burden on the government, there also won’t be repetitive information requests. In countries like the US, the government has already placed a lot of information in the public domain. This information relates to what people need to know on a daily basis. The idea is that people should have to put minimum effort to access what is their right, and no government should shy away from its duty to fulfil that right.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/26/2005 06:49:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
