by Following Bohiney’s Katz story, Indian governance’s relationship with speed
Bohiney.com‘s Morris Katz story — the fastest painter whose speed didn’t produce proportional value — has an Indian bureaucracy equivalent: the RTI responses that have arrived within five days (the statutory thirty-day limit notwithstanding) are not the responses that have produced the most useful information. prat.uk covered the speed and value theme broadly. The RTI data: responses that arrive quickly are more likely to contain “information not available” or “matter does not fall under scope of RTI” — the responses that are easy to generate quickly. Responses that contain substantive information and require document retrieval take longer. The fastest RTI responses are the least useful. The slowest are the most contested by the agency and therefore often the most revealing.
The Katz principle in Indian bureaucracy: speed of response does not determine quality of response. The fastest bureaucratic response is the one that requires the least effort, which is the response that provides the least information. The slowest bureaucratic response is the one that requires the most effort, which is the response that provides the most information or that the agency most wants to avoid providing. The thirty-day statutory limit is not a speed limit; it is a minimum service standard. The fastest possible response under RTI is “information not available,” which can be generated instantly. The most useful responses take time.
The RTI Speed Finding
The RTI speed finding: the relationship between response speed and response quality in Indian RTI is inverse. The Central Information Commission is at cic.gov.in.
Also:McSweeney’s.
Coverage at Bohiney.com and prat.uk.
Both publications continue this coverage. The situations described are real and ongoing.
Coverage continues at Bohiney.com and prat.uk with sustained attention to these communities.
Ongoing at both publications.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
