Government operations and workforce

Executive Order 13702: Creating a National Strategic Computing Initiative

President: Barack Obama

Created a coordinated federal program to advance exascale computing, software, workforce and public-private research.

Status: In effect. Is Executive Order 13702 still in effect? Yes. Executive Order 13702 remains an unrevoked strategic-computing framework with continuing coordination duties and no automatic expiration date. Reaching an exascale milestone, including Frontier’s May 2022 achievement, did not repeal its wider computing and research objectives. Sources: Federal Register 2015 executive order disposition table, EO 13702; Signed Executive Order 13702; Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Frontier exascale achievement, May 30, 2022.

What does Executive Order 13702 do?

EO 13702 established the National Strategic Computing Initiative to keep US high-performance computing capabilities internationally competitive. It assigned lead roles to Energy, Defense and the National Science Foundation and supporting roles to intelligence, NIST, NASA, FBI, Homeland Security and NOAA. The United States reached the order’s exascale objective with later Energy Department systems; the order remains unrevoked, while current AI and advanced-computing strategies have broadened the agenda.

Administration position: The initiative coordinated research and infrastructure; it did not itself appropriate money or guarantee exclusive US leadership.
SignedJuly 29, 2015
Primary agenciesEnergy Defense and NSF
Initial objectiveExascale computing

Before and after

Before the order

High-performance computing investments were distributed across agencies without this single strategic framework.

After the order

Agencies coordinated hardware software applications workforce and research toward exascale capability.

Who had to do what

Agency / officeActionTiming / position
Energy and DefenseAdvance systems and mission applicationsContinuing under later programs
NSFSupport foundational research and workforceContinuing
OSTP and National Science and Technology CouncilCoordinate strategyPolicy-dependent

What happened next

EO 13702 created NSCI.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory announced that Frontier had broken the exascale computing barrier, advancing the initiative’s computing objective without ending the wider order. Official source.