eGovernance and Freedom of Information Act: The Indian Experience

Freedom of Information is increasingly becoming an accepted part of democracy. This paper discusses the status of Freedom of Information (FOI) across a few countries and then examines the status of FOI in India. Around 90 countries have information acts in place and another 50 have legislation pending The Indian Parliament had enacted the "Freedom of Information Act, 2002" in order to promote, transparency and accountability in administration which is referred to as Right to Information Act (RTI) in India. Since, FOI is becoming more and more acceptable; the thrust is on developing mechanisms for its implementation and in trying to measure its impact and effectiveness. There are divergent views on what should define the success of FOI and how its performance should be measured. Should the performance be based on only efficiency measures or should it include broader governance parameters on effectiveness. Zifcak and Snell developed a four-stage typology characterizing the life of an FOI regime. This paper measures the performance of RTI in India based on Zifcak and Snell framework and compares it with the FOI status in other countries. It also studies the global practices to assess FOI. Based on the Global trajectory and learning's on FOI, it tries to analyze the status of RTI in India.