President Obama signs an executive order on greenhouse gas emissions in the Oval Office Thursday.(Photo: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI, AFP/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — President Obama signed a directive Thursday in an effort to "maintain the president's exclusive control of the information resources" provided to the White House.
The White House did not immediately explain the purpose of the memorandum, which gives the president the power "to specify the application of operating policies and procedures" used in any system that provides information to the White House.
The memo establishes a five-person Executive Committee for Presidential Information Technology and creates the position of White House information technology director. Obama appointed David Recordon, a former engineering director at Facebook, to that post, said Deputy Chief of Staff Anita Breckenridge.
While Obama cited information security was a chief concern, the memorandum also cited the need for "a single, modern, and high-quality enterprise that reduces duplication, inefficiency, and waste" by consolidating separate systems. Breckenridge said Recordon would work to consolidate overlapping systems, allow for greater corss-agency collaboration and "pave the way for improvements across the federal government."
The memorandum applies to the National Security Council, the White House Military Office and the Office of Administration -- all components of the Executive Office of the President. But it also expands the reach of White House control over information systems to include the the White House Communication Agency, which is part of the Defense Department, and the Secret Service, part of the Department of Homeland Security.
On Tuesday, the White House Office of Administration said it would no longer accept Freedom of Information Act requests, citing a 2009 court ruling that held it was exempt from the transparency law.
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At least one transparency advocate expressed concern that the memorandum could have the effect of shielding any information provided to the White House from the Freedom of Information Act.
"The White House may be attempting to carve out some information held by agencies from FOIA and classifications review requests by claiming it is the White House's," said Nate Jones, the Freedom of Information Act director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University. Much of the White House is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, while other executive agencies are not.
But Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy, said the scope of the order appeared to be "somewhat limited and focused" on the White House Communications Agency and the Secret Service — two agencies that work closely with the White House but aren't under the direct control of the president's office.
"It doesn't immediately set off alarm bells for me," he said.
The directive came in the form of a presidential memorandum, which is similar to an executive order and often carries the same force of law. Those memos are often used to sort out bureaucratic disputes, and Aftergood speculated that "there might have been some kind of breakdown in authority over some of these records" that prompted Obama to step in.
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While it makes no mention of e-mails or other specific records — and does not apply to the State Department — the move also comes amid a controversy over former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's use of an outside e-mail server in order to maintain personal control over her official e-mails.
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