The Right to Information Act states that information in the possession of public authorities, which may have an impact on the lives of citizens, can be obtained by filing an information application with the Authority.
To whom should a request be made to the Public Authority for information? The question of who will answer this? These questions will certainly arise in our mind. The law states that every public authority must have an officer for that. He is the “Information Officer” and sometimes more than one Information Officer in some public authorities.
Information Officers handle the information requests received to their offices. That is, they consider those requests and check if they can provide information to the application and send the answers accordingly. They should come forward to help the person requesting as much information as they can. When the Information Officer provides his / her service it is imperative that other staff provide their assistance to him / her.
Until an Information Officer is appointed to a Public Authority, the Chairmen or Chief Executive Officers of the Public Authorities will also act as temporary Information Officers.
If you are not satisfied with the reply sent to you by the Information Officer, you can appeal to another officer in the Public Authority. He is the “Designated Officer”. He will hear and respond to the appeal against the Information Officer.
If you need to contact the Information Officer or the Designated Officer, you can contact the Public Authority directly or by telephone. Or through the Authority’s website. It is not possible to say that details are available on the websites of all public authorities.
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