About OIRA
The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA, pronounced "oh-eye-ruh") is a Federal office established by Congress in the 1980 Paperwork Reduction Act. It is part of the Office of Management and Budget, which is an agency within the Executive Office of the President. It is staffed by both political appointees and career civil servants.
Under the Paperwork Reduction Act, OIRA reviews all collections of information by the Federal Government. OIRA also develops and oversees the implementation of government-wide policies in several areas, including information quality and statistical standards. In addition, OIRA reviews draft regulations under Executive Order 12866.
OIRA Administrator
The Office of the Administrator was created by Congress as part of the establishment of OIRA in the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980. The Administrator is nominated by the President and requires Senate confirmation. The current Administrator is Cass R. Sunstein.
Cass R. Sunstein
Before becoming Administrator, Cass R. Sunstein was the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Mr. Sunstein graduated in 1975 from Harvard College and in 1978 from Harvard Law School magna cum laude. After graduation, he clerked for Justice Benjamin Kaplan of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court, and then he worked as an attorney-advisor in the Office of the Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice. He was a faculty member at the University of Chicago Law School from 1981 to 2008.
Mr. Sunstein has testified before congressional committees on many subjects, and he has been involved as an advisor in constitution-making and law reform activities in a number of nations. A specialist in administrative law, regulatory policy, and behavioral economics, Mr. Sunstein is author of many articles and a number of books, including After the Rights Revolution (1990), Risk and Reason (2002), Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle (2005), Worst-Case Scenarios (2007), and Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (with Richard H. Thaler, 2008).
The Associate Administrator
Jeff Weiss
Jeff Weiss serves as the Associate Administrator of the Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), where he helps to lead the Obama Administration's development of regulatory policy, White House review of significant Executive Branch regulatory actions, and the Administration’s regulatory cooperation initiatives with Canada, the European Union (EU), and Mexico.
Previously, Mr. Weiss served as a senior negotiator on regulatory, standards and conformance matters in the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). As Senior Director for Technical Barriers to Trade, Mr. Weiss represented the United States in bilateral, regional and multilateral fora, including the WTO Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade, the Doha Round’s Non-Agricultural Market Access negotiations, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks. Working closely with a formal interagency committee and private sector stakeholders, Mr. Weiss negotiated with U.S. trading partners -- including Brazil, China, the EU, India, Korea, and Mexico -- to address problematic regulations that impeded market access for U.S. producers of numerous industrial and agricultural goods. Mr. Weiss has also worked in various international fora to enhance regulatory transparency, incentivize the development of standards through open, transparent, consensus-based processes, encourage the use of good regulatory practices (including cost-benefit analysis), and facilitate greater regulatory alignment with major U.S. trading partners. In all cases, U.S. positions were formulated with a view to ensuring the continued ability of U.S. regulators to protect the health and safety of American citizens and safeguard the environment, at the levels they consider appropriate.
Mr. Weiss’ previous experience includes serving as Assistant General Counsel at USTR, Assistant Legal Advisor at the Mission of the United States of America to the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, and an Associate at Collier Shannon Scott. He received a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an M.P.P. from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and an A.B. from Duke University.
