4 ms·

Where in the world do clerks spend all day answering FOI/RTI queries? I feel people greatly overestimate the typical volume of requests, having personally known

Where in the world do clerks spend all day answering FOI/RTI queries? I feel people greatly overestimate the typical volume of requests, having personally known at least three FOI officers in two jurisdictions. When you're seeing elevated request volume, it's likely that there's something substantial worth requesting, which is exactly the point of this form of legislation.

fooker 9y ago
Keeping my analogy, developers do not spend the whole day at meetings, but meeting to fix bugs are not generally worth it. Also, when there is a high volume of meetings, there is likely something wrong. I know for a fact that in the Indian Railways, people spend weeks digging up information required to answer RTI queries. Instead of going by feelings ask government employees (preferably someone with a high level view of things) about it. I am not saying RTI is useless. However, without a computerized infrastructure for most, if not all, protocols and processes in the government, it is just a game of cat and mouse.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  > I know for a fact that in the Indian Railways, people spend weeks digging up information required to answer RTI queries. The usual solution to a problem like that is to publish the frequently requested types of information in bulk, before they need to be requested, since they are public records by definition. It costs a bit more than doing nothing, but not nearly as much as corruption does.
csydas 9y ago
> When you're seeing elevated request volume, it's likely that there's something substantial worth requesting Or you're seeing persons trying to frustrate the system with senseless requests. This happens with businesses all the time when they provide courtesy services (sprint's tty service for example was a regular tool for prank calls, USPS and their free boxes resulted in people being flooded with box orders) I'm 100% for transparency, but it's not a magic bullet. There is a real and non trivial cost for such transparency and it's the price we have to pay for diligence. often, societies seem unwilling to pay and instead demand that an organization do everything they used to and more with no additional resources, and transparency, especially for organizatikns without the resources to have digitized things,means a lot of human input and work.

fooker 9y ago

Keeping my analogy, developers do not spend the whole day at meetings, but meeting to fix bugs are not generally worth it. Also, when there is a high volume of meetings, there is likely something wrong. I know for a fact that in the Indian Railways, people spend weeks digging up information required to answer RTI queries. Instead of going by feelings ask government employees (preferably someone with a high level view of things) about it. I am not saying RTI is useless. However, without a computerized infrastructure for most, if not all, protocols and processes in the government, it is just a game of cat and mouse.

microcolonel 9y ago
> I know for a fact that in the Indian Railways, people spend weeks digging up information required to answer RTI queries. The usual solution to a problem like that is to publish the frequently requested types of information in bulk, before they need to be requested, since they are public records by definition. It costs a bit more than doing nothing, but not nearly as much as corruption does.

csydas 9y ago

> When you're seeing elevated request volume, it's likely that there's something substantial worth requesting Or you're seeing persons trying to frustrate the system with senseless requests. This happens with businesses all the time when they provide courtesy services (sprint's tty service for example was a regular tool for prank calls, USPS and their free boxes resulted in people being flooded with box orders) I'm 100% for transparency, but it's not a magic bullet. There is a real and non trivial cost for such transparency and it's the price we have to pay for diligence. often, societies seem unwilling to pay and instead demand that an organization do everything they used to and more with no additional resources, and transparency, especially for organizatikns without the resources to have digitized things,means a lot of human input and work.