It’s been a chaotic week in secrecy news, so it’s no surprise that a recent executive order, ostensibly intended to stop “waste, fraud, and abuse by eliminating information silos,” has flown under the radar (with the exception of Nextgov’s Natalie Alms, who covered the order the day after it was issued).

This new order deserves attention. It has the potential to grant the Department of Government Efficiency more control over agency records, and hints that the Trump administration may be considering issuing a new executive order on classification.

Both could spell bad news for the public’s right to know.

The order states, among other things, that agencies must give officials designated by the president (in other words, DOGE) access to all unclassified agency systems and records. It also directs agency heads to rescind any current guidance that might hinder DOGE’s access.

On its face, more information sharing across the government is a good thing. Many agencies, and bureaus within agencies, compartmentalize information in ways that are nonsensical, inefficient, and even dangerous.

It’s unlikely this order is a good faith attempt to improve information sharing, however. It is more likely intended as a way for DOGE to legitimize the incursions it’s already made at agencies. Looking ahead, it could also make it easier for DOGE to establish more explicit control and ownership of agency records.

This would be especially problematic if DOGE maintains its purported status as a Presidential Records Act entity.

If DOGE convinces the courts that it’s a Presidential Records Act entity and therefore not subject to the Freedom of Information Act and it takes custody of agency records by placing them on private servers — which it did at the Office of Personnel Management — DOGE could try to claim that the agency records have become presidential records. This would likely invite litigation, but it would make it considerably more difficult for the public to request federal agency records that DOGE has access to under the FOIA for the foreseeable future.

Equally eyebrow-raising is a short section toward the bottom of the new order that requires agencies to conduct a review of their classification policies to ensure they are only classifying information that is critical to protect national security. It further directs agencies to submit their reviews to the Office of Management and Budget, as well as to make recommendations about which policies should be eliminated.

On its face, this is also a good idea. The government overclassifies information anywhere between 75% and 90% of the time. But the rationale behind this part of the order is unclear.

The current order on classified information already requires agencies to do this with their Fundamental Classification Guidance Reviews (Section 1.9 of Executive Order 13526), which is overseen by the National Archives and Records Administration. This order has been in effect since 2009.

It’s possible that Trump wants agencies to submit this information directly to OMB and the White House because the administration is on a fact-finding mission, the results of which could inform a new executive order on classification.

It would be a good thing if the administration issued a new order as a good faith attempt to make the government more transparent. But if DOGE’s actions are indicative of how the administration approaches transparency, we have a lot to worry about.

Most of the government’s classification rules derive from executive orders rather than statutes (this is true for most everything besides nuclear information, which is governed by the Atomic Energy Act), so any changes could have significant impacts. For example, a new order might:

  • Impact or imperil the work of the National Declassification Center, which was established by the current order to streamline the declassification process.
  • Make it more difficult for federal officials to lodge complaints when they think information is improperly classified.
  • Make it easier for officials to hide wrongdoing by rescinding current rules that state information may not be classified “in order to conceal violations of law.”

If the Trump administration is serious about improving declassification for more than just JFK assassination records, it should do something that President Joe Biden’s administration didn’t do when it considered issuing new classification rules: ask the public for suggestions and recommendations about how to improve the classification system.