Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

7. Intelligence Community · Notable

Significantly reduce the number of Original Classification Authorities

Not started

223 7. Intelligence Community

“More stringent policies to effect significant reductions in the number of Original Classification Authorities (OCAs).”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    No policy reducing the number of Original Classification Authorities was found, and the count that would measure one has now been read. The Information Security Oversight Office's FY2024 Annual Report to the President, transmitted 2025-08-07 and so published inside the window, reports that "in FY 2024, 19 agencies reported the following 1,661 OCA delegations: 694 Top Secret-level OCAs, 963 Secret-level OCAs, 4 Confidential-level OCAs". The same report makes the government's own case for this ask: ISOO found one agency with "four individuals who had been delegated OCA, but none had made a classification or declassification decision in nearly 15 years", observed that agencies which are "primarily consumers" of classified information "have an unnecessarily large number of individuals who have been delegated OCA", and concluded that "at the systemic level, ISOO assesses that many individuals currently delegated the authority to originally classify information do not need that authority to further their agency's mission". Oversight naming the problem is not a stringent policy effecting a significant reduction, so the Status does not move; the report is attached as dated Primary evidence on the ask's own object. How far the negative reaches, and where it stops: the Federal Register full-text "Original Classification Authority" since 2025-01-20 returns zero documents, the phrase appears nowhere in the enrolled text of P.L. 119-60, and Executive Order 13526 is unamended — but 1,661 is a **pre-window** figure, because ISOO's annual report series at `archives.gov` runs 1979 through FY2024 and no FY2025 report has been published as of 2026-09-06. There is therefore no in-window OCA count in existence to compare it against, by anyone.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • One negative search covered the classification and declassification asks on pp. 223-224: #590, #591, #592, #593, #594 and #596.
  • Reviewed 2026-09-06. An earlier note said the ISOO annual report “is not on a machine-readable allowlisted path”. It is: the ISOO reports page opens and links the current report directly at https://www.archives.gov/files/isoo/reports/isoo-fy-2024-annual-report-final-508.pdf, with an annual report archive carrying every edition back to 1979. archives.gov is allowlisted as a .gov site. The count is in the chapter Original Classification Authority Designations. The only thing standing between this ask and a measured answer is time: the FY2025 report has not been published, and three plausible addresses for it do not exist. The baseline is on the record; the comparison is not available yet, to us or to anyone. When the FY2025 report appears, the number to beat is 1,661.
  • Executive Order 13526, the order that defines classification categories, original classification authorities and classification guides, was neither amended nor revoked in the window: a Federal Register full-text search for “Executive Order 13526” since 2025-01-20 returns four documents, all agency information-collection or Privacy Act notices citing the order as it stands.
Action
eliminate
Object
Original Classification Authorities (OCAs)
ID
591