RTI Requests About AI Decisions: Be Ready

The RTI landed on a Friday afternoon in a municipal corporation that had spent the year celebrating a property-tax 'AI assistant'. The applicant was not a journalist. She was a shopkeeper whose demand notice had jumped. She asked four questions: whether a software agent had proposed the revision; which data it had used; who had approved the proposal; and the file noting that recorded the human decision. The Public Information Officer had seventeen working days left and a vendor slide that said explainable AI.

He forwarded the application to the vendor. The vendor said the model was proprietary. He drafted a refusal under Section 8(1)(d) and 8(1)(j) covering the entire matter. The First Appellate Authority, who had actually read the Act, sent it back with one line: the speaking order is not a trade secret, and the applicant is asking about her own demand.

That is the shape of the next five years. The Right to Information Act, 2005 does not contain the word algorithm. It does not need to. Citizens can seek information from public authorities. AI decisions that affect rights, money, licences or benefits generate records — or they should. Where they do not, the honest reply is that the record does not exist, which is its own scandal. Where they do, the PIO must disclose, redact, or apply a real exemption. Inventing a new exemption called AI is how you lose at the Commission.

This is a field guide for PIOs, First Appellate Authorities, DPOs and CIOs. It is written on 16 August 2026. It is not legal advice. It is a disclosure pack you can start this month. Prcept AI runs on-prem and air-gapped, is DPIIT recognised, and does not train on customer data. We still expect our customers to answer RTI from their own stores.

What RTI actually reaches

Section 2 of the Act defines information broadly: records, documents, emails, opinions, advices, press releases, circulars, contracts, reports, papers, samples, data material in any electronic form. An agent prompt library, a model-card, a retrieval log, a contract with a processor, a change ticket that raised a temperature parameter, and a speaking order are all capable of being information. The format — JSON, PDF, eOffice noting — does not save you.

Section 4 already asks public authorities to disclose suo motu as much as possible so that people need not file applications. An AI register of workflows, purposes, owners and locations is a Section 4 candidate. Hiding the existence of an agent that decides tax or benefits, then acting shocked at an RTI, is the opposite of the Act's design.

The 30-day clock in Section 7 is not paused because the NIC lead is on leave or the vendor is in another time zone. If you cannot export a case packet without the vendor, you have a procurement problem that will become a CIC problem. Design the export as a departmental act.

Exemptions are a scalpel

Section 8(1) lists grounds on which there is no obligation to give information. They include prejudicial effect on sovereignty, security, strategic, scientific or economic interests of the State; contempt of court; parliamentary privilege; commercial confidence, trade secrets and intellectual property where disclosure harms a third party; fiduciary information; foreign-State information; endangerment of life; investigation; Cabinet papers; and personal information whose disclosure has no relation to public activity or would cause an unwarranted invasion of privacy, unless larger public interest applies. Section 8(2) and the public-interest tests matter. Section 10 allows severability: release what you can, withhold what you must, and say so.

Do not overclaim. A foundation model's weights may raise commercial-confidence or security questions. The fact that an agent proposed a 12 per cent hike on Shop 41, the circular it retrieved, and the officer who signed, usually do not. Personal data of a third-party informant may need redaction under 8(1)(j) and under your DPDP map. The applicant's own identifiers in their own file are not a reason to refuse the whole file.

Fiduciary (8(1)(e)) is not a magic word for every consultant report. Commercial confidence (8(1)(d)) is not a magic word for every line of a government contract. Security (8(1)(a)) is not a magic word for a scholarship chatbot. If you use those limbs, write the harm in nouns. Commissions have seen adjectives before.

A first-cut map. Confirm with counsel and the live Act. This table is not a refusal authority.

What the applicant asked	Usual first instinct	A more defensible handling
Did an agent touch my case?	We do not disclose internal tools	Yes/no plus the workflow name from the AI register (Section 4 spirit)
What documents did it retrieve in my case?	RAG is proprietary	Document titles/IDs you already hold; redact third-party personal data
Give me the full system prompt	Refuse entire application	Consider severability: purpose and public rules yes; exploit-ready jailbreak text maybe not
Give me the model weights	Automatic 8(1)(d)	Weights are often not 'held' as a readable record; say what you hold; do not use this to hide the speaking order
Who signed the demand?	Officer name is personal information	Public servants' official acts are the core of RTI; names of posts almost always go out
All chat logs of all citizens this year	Dump the SIEM	8(1)(j) and DPDP third-party issues are real; do not confuse this with the applicant's own log

The disclosure pack a PIO can open on day one

Do not start drafting from a blank screen when the application number is already in the portal. Keep a pack that internal audit and the DPO have already seen.

• The live AI register: workflow, purpose, model family, location (on-prem / SDC / named cloud), owner, whether citizen-facing.
• The standing order that authorised each workflow, with the competent authority and sunset.
• A one-page description in plain language of what the agent may do and what it is forbidden to do (payments, children, out-of-purpose).
• The prompt and policy version list, with dates — so a June application is answered against the June prompt, not today's.
• A redaction protocol: what is third-party personal data, what is security, who applies Section 10.
• A dummy reconstructable packet (four sentences from the CAG companion piece) so the PIO knows the shape.
• The processor contract clauses on assistance with statutory information requests.
• A list of what you do not hold (weights hosted elsewhere, vendor training sets) written in advance, honestly.

Section 4(1)(b) manuals should mention the existence of agent workflows the way they mention other decision systems. A citizen should not need an RTI to learn that an agent exists. They may still need one to learn what happened in their case.

DPDP is not an RTI shield

The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 will, once operational duties apply from 13 May 2027, give Data Principals rights of access and correction against Data Fiduciaries, with the Board already in existence since 13 November 2025. Those rights are not a copy of RTI and they are not a repeal of RTI. A citizen may use both paths. A department that tells a PIO to refuse because DPDP exists is mixing statutes.

Where the two bite together is third-party personal data inside a retrieval set or a conversation log. You may need to sever. You may need to ask whether larger public interest requires disclosure. You should not dump another citizen's grievance text because someone filed an RTI for 'all logs'. Design the log so that a case packet can be extracted without a warehouse dump.

Two applications, two files

Objections you will hear from the floor

The vendor says disclosing prompts will let people jailbreak the agent. Answer: that is an argument for not pasting exploit-ready text, not for hiding that an agent exists or how a case was decided. Use Section 10. Write the harm.

The assessment wing says officers will be personally targeted if names go out. Answer: official designations and official acts are the ordinary stuff of RTI. If there is a specific life-and-liberty threat, 8(1)(g) exists. It is not a standing cloak for every clerk.

The DPO says wait until May 2027. Answer: RTI has been in force since 2005. The first application will not wait for DPDP operational duties. Build the pack now.

Leadership says refuse everything and see if they appeal. Answer: that is how you collect costs, Commission remarks, and a newspaper story about a secret algorithm. Disclose what you can on day twenty-five.

A four-week playbook for the PIO and the DPO

• Week 1: inventory live agent workflows against the AI register. Mark which are citizen-facing or money-facing. Those generate RTI first.
• Week 2: draft the Section 4 paragraph that admits the agents exist. Clear it with the FAA. Publish it where you publish other manuals.
• Week 3: write the redaction protocol with one worked example. Train two PIOs on extracting a case packet without a vendor login.
• Week 4: tabletop three applications — own-case, journalist-warehouse, and security-adjacent. Time the replies. Fix whatever needed the vendor.

File note you can paste

Subject: Disclosure pack for information requests relating to agent-assisted decisions.

The Right to Information Act, 2005 applies to information held by this public authority, including electronic records generated by software agents. There is no exemption titled artificial intelligence. Section 8 grounds, where invoked, will be applied limb by limb with recorded reasons and, where possible, severability under Section 10. Commercial confidence, fiduciary, security and personal-information limbs will not be used as a blanket over a citizen's own speaking order.

A disclosure pack — register, standing order, purpose note, version list, redaction protocol, dummy packet — will be kept with the PIO and updated when a prompt or model version changes. Vendor assistance will be a contract duty, not a precondition of the 30-day clock.

This note is an internal aid. It is not legal advice. The First Appellate Authority will review the first three live replies.

How a PIO writes the first reply without inventing law

Open with what you hold. 'This public authority holds a speaking order dated …, a retrieval list for application …, and a register row for workflow …' is a better first paragraph than a lecture on neural networks. Then apply Section 10 in the open: attach A and B; withhold C because of limb X; the harm is this noun. Then tell the applicant the appeal route. A reply that only recites exemptions, without saying what was considered for release, is how First Appeals write themselves.

If you truly do not hold the weights, say you do not hold them. Do not refuse them as a trade secret and also claim you do not hold them. Pick one honest sentence. If the vendor holds a log you should have held, that is a procurement finding in a second note, not an excuse in the RTI reply. The applicant is not obliged to wait while you renegotiate a DPA.

Third-party notices under Section 11, where a contract price or a vendor's unpublished architecture is in play, have their own clock. Start them on day two, not day twenty-eight. AI does not pause Section 11. It only makes officers forget that a vendor is a third party and not a co-PIO.

State PIOs should confirm whether their State Information Commission has said anything useful about electronic records. Most have not said anything useful about agents. That silence is not a new exemption. It is a reason to write a careful, ordinary reply.

• Keep a running annex of AI-related RTIs so the FAA can see patterns — own-case, warehouse, security-adjacent — and correct overclaiming.
• Never ask the vendor to draft the refusal. They will overclaim 8(1)(d) on the speaking order.
• If the application is in a scheduled language your desk serves, do not hide behind an English-only packet. That is a Section 4 problem wearing an RTI number.

This article is informational field guidance, not legal advice. Confirm the live RTI Act, CIC orders, your state rules, DPDP commencement and counsel before you issue a reply.