Government operations and workforce

Executive Order 13642: Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information

President: Barack Obama

Required agencies to manage information as an asset and default newly generated public data to open, machine-readable formats.

Status: Superseded. Is Executive Order 13642 still in effect? No. Executive Order 13642 was superseded. See Federal Register record.

What does Executive Order 13642 do?

EO 13642 paired with OMB Memorandum M-13-13 to make open and machine-readable formats the default for newly created federal information, while preserving privacy, confidentiality, security and other legal restrictions. Agencies built data inventories and publishing processes around it. Congress later enacted the OPEN Government Data Act, placing many open-data duties in statute; current practice therefore rests on both the order’s legacy and newer law and guidance.

Administration position: “Open by default” never meant every government record must be public; privacy, national security, confidentiality, intellectual-property and records laws still restrict release.
SignedMay 9, 2013
Implementing policyOMB M-13-13
Statutory successorOPEN Government Data Act

Before and after

Before the order

Agencies published data in inconsistent formats and often designed systems without public reuse in mind.

After the order

Information lifecycle planning included inventories, machine readability, metadata and public access from the outset.

Who had to do what

Agency / officeActionTiming / position
OMB and federal CIOIssue policy and oversee implementationContinuing through later guidance
AgenciesInventory and publish eligible dataContinuing under statute
General Services AdministrationOperate Data.gov and shared resourcesContinuing

What happened next

EO 13642 issued.

OMB released M-13-13.

OPEN Government Data Act became law.