Re: [LIS-Forum] On RTI Act

Dear Sri Rajasekharan Library has very improtant roles to play in achieving the objectives of Right to Information Act. I ahve earlier prepared a paper on this aspect which you can find at: http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00007845/ Regards Dr. R. Raman Nair Mahatma Gandhi University --- Rajan wrote:

Dear Shri P Vyasamoorty,

As a person with very good knowledge about RTI act and its requirements, I would suggest that librarians are not very suitable for working as State Public Information Officers(SPIO) in the Institutions they work. The job requirements of SPIO are to receive applications, ensure access to information and dispose of applications after careful examination of merit of each one. Under the RTI Act. the cataloging, arrangement and retrieval of information need to be done by the concerned officer and not by anyone else including the SPIO. As well, an officer in sufficient command and authority in that office is the right choice for the position of SPIO so as to ensure easy access to information through the subordinate officers. The job of SPIO involves a lot of quasi-judicial decision making on which librarians are ill-equipped unlike the administrative personnel.

As RTI involves a lot of administrative re-arrangement of records, the librarians can do a lot in that area, particularly in numbering and cataloguing of them.

Best Regards,

K Rajasekharan Librarian, Kerala Institute of Local Administration(KILA) Mulagunnathukavu, Thrissur - 680581 , India

----- Original Message ----- From: "Padmanabha Vyasamoorthy" Subject: Re: [LIS-Forum] Right to Information Act -Jobs should be given to Information Professionals To: "vasanth raj"

I am sorry to reply this message after such a long gap. Vasanth has raised an important issue. He states that Librarians are better suited to work as Information Officers and that they are neglected. I would like to ask a few questions and elicit views of LIS personnel on these: How many librarians know what is this monster RTI all about? What is the role of RTI officer in a govt institution? What type of information is the scope of RTI Officer? How is the librarian better suited? What do we librarians learn or know about Govt way of files (& records) organization - numbering, generation, storing, retrieving, archiving, rules governing files & documents & records preservation and conservation etc? How about confidentiality coding and providing restricted access? How about documents relating to public -- say birth certificates. With absolutely no theoretical or practical knowledge of any of these things how do librarians claim that they are better suited? The RTI was talked about for a number of years before becoming law. Why did not LIS schools provide changes in the curriculam to mould librarians into RTI officers? Well I have a lot of doubts. Any comments?

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