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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).
OIRA Associate Administrator
Michael A. Fitzpatrick
Michael Fitzpatrick currently 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 and White House review of significant Executive Branch regulatory actions. He serves as the Executive Branch liaison to the ABA’s Administrative Law Section and has led several U.S. delegations in meetings with the European Union, both in Europe and the U.S. During the Presidential Transition, Mr. Fitzpatrick served as deputy lead of the Executive Office of the President and Government Operations Agency Review Teams.
From 2001 to 2009, Mr. Fitzpatrick was in the Washington, DC office of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, where he was a partner in the Litigation Practice Group, specializing in white collar, complex civil, and regulatory matters. Before joining Akin Gump, Mr. Fitzpatrick served as an Assistant United States Attorney in Washington, DC and as a Senior Advisor to the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget. Mr. Fitzpatrick clerked for Judge William Norris on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit after graduating from Stanford Law School.
He received his M.A. in American History from the University of Virginia and his B.A. from Brown University. Mr. Fitzpatrick has written several articles, and appeared on numerous panels, on the regulatory process. Currently, he serves on the Executive Committee for the Public Private Partnership for Justice Reform in Afghanistan and on the Board of Directors of Cultural Tourism DC.
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