in effect
This is Executive Order 14243, signed March 20, 2025, and published in the Federal Register on March 25, 2025. It directs federal agencies to remove internal barriers that prevent government officials from accessing and sharing unclassified government data. Its stated goal is to reduce duplication and help the government detect improper payments and fraud.
The order tells agency heads to give presidentially-designated federal officials (or their designees) full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, data, and IT systems for anti-waste, fraud, and abuse work, including sharing data across and within agencies. Within 30 days, agencies must rescind or modify any guidance that blocks such data sharing, and must send the Office of Management and Budget a report cataloging relevant data-access regulations (including “system of records notices”) with recommendations to eliminate or modify them; these regulatory changes are exempted from Executive Order 14192. Immediately, agencies must seek “unfettered access” to data from all state programs that receive federal funding, including program data held in third-party databases, and the Secretary of Labor is specifically directed to get unfettered access to all unemployment data and related payment records. Within 45 days, agencies must also review their classification policies and report to OMB on whether any over-classify material. The order states it supersedes prior executive orders and directly-issued presidential rules to the extent they block the data sharing it describes.
Federal agencies and their heads are directly affected, as they must open their unclassified data systems and revise or repeal guidance and regulations that restrict access; the term “agency” here excludes the Executive Office of the President. State programs that receive federal funding—and third parties holding data for those programs—are also reached, along with unemployment-benefit data systems under the Department of Labor. The order explicitly creates no legal rights or benefits enforceable by any person against the government, and is to be carried out consistent with existing law and available funding.