Administration, Office of

The Office of Administration is the unit of the Executive Office of the President that handles housekeeping functions for the White House Office, including payroll and accounting, central purchasing, and the law and general reference libraries. Its Reference Center, with access to government and commercial computer databases, provides the President and White House staff with background research under deadline pressures.

The office trains White House aides in the use of computers and has equipped more than 1,100 White House staffers and members of the Executive Office of the President with personal computers. Its OASIS system software provides electronic mail, calendar and time management software, and access to wire services and databases using modems, and it allows staffers to fax documents from their computers. It does not store documents centrally, nor does it handle classified and top secret information.

In the early 1990s the system was organized around three minicomputers in the data center named Chip, Dale, and Opus, with backup memory units named Bugs and Daffy. The OASIS network is connected to Air Force One, the President's airplane, via satellite. All White House computers with the exception of the one used personally by the President are networked so that information can move rapidly throughout the White House Office. Because much of the system was installed in 1988, the Clinton administration replaced most of it with an advanced network of workstations and laptop computers in the first months of 1993.

See also Executive Office of the President; White House Office

Sources

• Nick Sullivan, “The Ultimate Home Office: The White House”, Home Office Computing, February 1992, 44–45

The Office of Administration was established within the Executive Office of the President (EOP) by Reorganization Plan 1 of 1977 (implemented by Executive Order 12, 028, 42 Fed. Reg. 62, 895 [1977], issued on December 12, 1977, by President Jimmy Carter). The office was created to help centralize the activities of all EOP offices into a single agency. The director of the Office of Administration, who is appointed by and reports directly to the president, is responsible for, according to Executive Order 12,028, "ensuring that the Office of Administration provides units with the Executive Office of the President common administrative support and services."

The Office of Administration provides administrative support services to all EOP offices in the White House, except services that are in direct support of the president. The Office of Administration may, however, at the request of the president, help the White House provide administrative services in direct support of the president. The services provided by the Office of Administration include personnel management; financial management; data processing; library; and office operations, including the handling of mail (except for presidential mail), messenger service, printing and duplication, graphics, word processing, procurement, and supply. The office also oversees three libraries (not open to the general public): a general reference library located in the New Executive Office Building, and a reference library and a law library in the Old Executive Office Building.

The Office of Administration consists of nearly two hundred full- and part-time employees who maintain accounts for all EOP offices; recruit employees (except for those who will staff the Office of Policy Development and the White House, all of whom are political appointees); and maintain official records, including those of the White House. In addition to the director and an assistant director, the office is managed by three deputy assistant directors, who provide supervision in the areas of general services, information management, and resources management.

Since its creation, the Office of Administration has developed sophisticated computer systems to respond to the increasingly complex needs of the White House and the EOP.