RTI for Activists & NGOs — free certified course

Who this is for. This is not a beginner's filing tutorial (that is the Citizen Crash Course). It is for the person who files forty RTIs a year, or who should: an NGO programme officer building an evidence base, a ward-level organiser fighting an encroachment, a researcher mapping scheme leakage across a district. The course treats RTI as infrastructure for a campaign, not as a one-off letter.

1. A campaign RTI plan: the 12-application skeleton that covers any issue from money to mechanism to outcome.
2. A §4(1)(b) suo-motu audit checklist — scoring any public authority's proactive disclosures against the sixteen clauses, and converting the gaps into a first-letter demand.
3. A pattern-mining method: how to sit on 50+ replies and extract the story the numbers tell (pendency by office, denial by exemption, delay by month).
4. A second-appeal and CIC complaint strategy that matches the right vehicle to the right failure.
5. The certificate: serial-numbered, publicly verifiable, LinkedIn-ready.

1. Module 01 — Campaign-scale RTI design — how to decompose a campaign question into requestable records; designing the first 12 applications; keeping asks severable so §10 works for you.
2. Module 02 — §4 suo-motu disclosure compliance audit — the sixteen mandatory clauses of §4(1)(b); scoring an authority's website; the follow-up letter that turns missing disclosure into an obligation.
3. Module 03 — Pattern-mining your RTI corpus — building a reply register; classifying refusals by exemption and office; turning 60 replies into one publishable finding.
4. Module 04 — Sustaining a campaign + protecting yourself — sequencing appeals so the campaign outlives the enthusiasm; harassment and vexatious-application pushback; working with journalists without burning sources.
5. Final exam — 18 questions · 12 minutes · 70% to pass.

• 18 questions, drawn from all four modules
• 12-minute timer, 3 attempts
• 70% to pass
• Tab-locked, with the Academy Honor Code

Print-ready PDF with a serial number in the ACT-XXXXXXXXXX series, a public verification URL anyone can check, and a LinkedIn-ready badge. Valid 12 months; a short refresher quiz renews it. The certificate says you studied the method — the campaign plan you build in Module 01 is what proves it.

Every certificate is issued against your RTI Wiki Academy account, serial-stamped, and verifiable at the public verification page — an employer or funder can confirm it without emailing us. Certificates are revoked for Honor Code violations detected in the exam analytics.

Yes — all RTI Wiki Academy courses are free, including the exam and the certificate.

Yes; each member registers separately so each certificate is individually verifiable. Teams that take it together usually run Module 02's audit as a single exercise on one authority.

Some familiarity helps, but Module 01 re-covers the mechanics quickly. Absolute beginners should do the Citizen Crash Course first.

No. It is an RTI Wiki Academy certificate — an independent civil-society course, not a government or university qualification.

The course text is English; the templates it teaches (application, first appeal) are bilingual and downloadable.

• All certified courses
• Advanced PIO/FAA CPD course
• State portals directory
• Landmark CIC decisions
• The RTI Playbook book

Last reviewed: 27 August 2026. Module list, exam format and certificate mechanics verified against the live course pages.