Filing an RTI is easy. Tracking whether it was answered, appealed, and closed is a mess. We built an open-source tracker that has been used to log 6,200 RTI applications across India.
The Right to Information Act was passed in 2005 and remains one of the most powerful accountability tools in India. What has quietly weakened it, however, is the sheer administrative labour of tracking applications, first appeals, and CIC hearings across time.
We built RTI Tracker as an open-source web app. Users log an RTI application, set the statutory deadline, and get automatic reminders for the 30-day response window and 30-day first-appeal window. All data is stored locally on the user’s device — we hold nothing on our servers.
Six thousand two hundred applications have been logged in the first year. Users include journalists, RTI activists, RWAs, and a few municipal ward committees. We have no funding, no ads and no plans for either.
The reason it works: we did not try to replace RTI. We tried to remove one specific pain — remembering the deadlines. Doing one small thing well is the shortest description of civic tech that works.