Purpose
The OMB Memoranda Disposition Table was created to fill the absence of a publicly available, easy-to-use resource to determine if an OMB memorandum is still in effect or has been modified in some way. Per the author’s experience, an incredible number of federal policies, procedures, and guidance documents still contain explicit references to memoranda that have been rescinded or modified, with agencies continuing to implement long-stopped requirements.
The concept of a “disposition table” for OMB memoranda is modelled after the Federal Register’s Executive Order Disposition Table.
Overview
The memoranda table lists each memo’s identifier, title, issuance date, and rescission status.
Memos with a rescission status of “Active” have not been rescinded or modified. Those with a recission status value of another memo’s identifier have been fully rescinded by the listed memo unless additional information in parentheses has been provided. For example, memos M-17-09 and M-16-04 below have both been fully rescinded by M-19-03.
Some memoranda are only modified in part, such as in the example below in which M-21-13 had only pages 3–8 rescinded by M-21-22.
To quickly determine if a memorandum has been rescinded or modified, the search bar can be used. For example, by typing in M-19-17, the memorandum itself and all memoranda it has rescinded or modified are listed.
Methodology
The data for this page was collected initially via a manual review of all publicly available memoranda. After the manual review was conducted, automated tools were used to parse the documents for indications of rescission (e.g., words such as “replace,” “rescind,” “supersede,” and “modify”) along with indications that a memorandum identifier is used (e.g., “M-##-##”). All newly released memoranda are read in-full to determine if any rescissions have been made.
Caveats
The disposition table does not address memoranda-based rescissions of non-memoranda items. For example, while OMB issues other types of items, such as its circulars and bulletins, these are not noted in the table.
The disposition table does attempt, to the greatest extent possible, collect any rescissions of OMB memoranda from non-memoranda sources. For example, OMB memoranda are occasionally rescinded or modified by OMB circulars.
A small but significant number of memoranda — particularly, many published prior to 2002 — are not available via OMB’s current or archived websites, nor could they be located in other online archives. Such memoranda are noted with [Unknown] value.