Free Online Certificate Course on RTI by DoPT: File an RTI as You Do the Course!

The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Government of India (GoI) has launched an ‘Online Certificate Course on RTI’ for various stakeholders.

This Online Certificate Course on RTI is launched in association with the Centre for Good Governance, Hyderabad.

With a view to make the earlier 15-day course more interesting and practical, now the course has been bifurcated into two versions, namely – 7-Day Online Certificate Course (English) and 15-Day Online Certificate Course (English).

While the 7-day course will be introductory in nature, the 15-day course will be extensive and with a hands-on orientation whereby candidates will have to practically apply the RTI Act during the course.

In other words, the 15-day course will be based on the principle of “learning while doing”. Therefore, it is requested that those who take the 7-day course should also go for the 15-day course for experiencing the practical utility of the RTI Act.

The primary objective of the course(s) is to make both information providers and information seekers aware on the salient features of the RTI Act, 2005. Thus, the course(s) is/are useful to both government employees and common citizens.

Registration

The students need to register on the official website HERE. 

Who can take the course?

1. Public Information Officers (PIOs)

2. Assistant Public Information Officers (APIOs)

3. Appellate Authorities

4. Officials assisting the above designated officers or other public officials Citizens

5. Representative of Civil Society Organisations (including Media Organisations)

6. Any other person(s) who could be a direct / indirect stakeholder

Requisites

Successful completion of the 7-day course will be mandatory in order to be eligible to take the 15-day version of the course. Besides, for registering in the 15-day course a candidate will be required to file an RTI application with any public service delivery public authority.

At the time of registration the candidate has to give the reference to the RTI application filed along with the response s/he has received. The 15 day course can only be taken after 6 weeks to enable the RTI application to be filed and a response to be received.

The second aspect of this 15-day hands-on version of the course mandates a candidate to conduct a proactive disclosure (Section 4 (1) (b) of the RTI Act) study of any public service delivery public authority.

This will be a desk study based on which the candidate will submit a report at the end of the course. This report on the proactive disclosures study will be evaluated on set criteria and accordingly an online certificate will be issued to each successful candidate.