Why replies sometimes take longer than thirty days

Several of the common causes are consequences of the Act's own machinery rather than mere administrative drift. Knowing which one applies tells you whether the clock has legitimately paused or the deadline has actually been missed.

• The information sits with a different public authority. Under Section 6(3) the application must be transferred to the appropriate public authority as soon as practicable and in any case within five days, and you must be informed of the transfer.
• The PIO needs another officer's help. Section 5(4) lets the PIO seek the assistance of any other officer. Under Section 5(5) that officer must render assistance and, for the purposes of any contravention of the Act, is treated as a PIO — a liability provision, not a rule that installs a replacement PIO whenever the notified one is unavailable.
• A further fee has been raised. Under Section 7(3)(a), the period between despatch of the fee intimation and payment of the fee is excluded when computing the thirty days, so the clock legitimately pauses at that stage.
• The application went to an Assistant PIO. The proviso to Section 5(2) adds five days to the response period when an application is given to an APIO.
• Older records are not readily traceable. Where a matter is old, locating the file can take time. You can ask for the record of the file's movement and for what the authority currently holds — though an RTI requests records, it cannot compel a department to recreate a record it does not hold.