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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