Controlled Unclassified Information is a category of unclassified information defined in a directive on May 9, 2008, by President George W. Bush. CUI replaces categories such as For Official Use Only, Sensitive But Unclassified and Law Enforcement Sensitive categories. The Presidential memorandum assigned responsibility to the National Archives for overseeing and managing the implementation of the CUI framework. This memorandum has since been rescinded by of November 4, 2010, and the guidelines previously outlined within it were expanded upon to improve uniformity across all Federal agencies and to develop a standard policy regarding the controlled unclassification process itself. In a similar previous effort, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Reducing Information Control Designations Act,, on March 17, 2009. The bill was referred to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs of the 111th Congress in the US Senate, but it was never passed by the Senate. The current doctrine, policy, and processes for Controlled Unclassified Information came out of a study and policy change proposal which originated within the Information Sharing and Collaboration Office of the Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Under Secretariat of the Department of Homeland Security in 2004. The term Controlled Unclassified Information was coined by the authors of the study which reviewed over 140 various forms of unclassified information in use throughout the federal government at the time. Authors of the study recommended a new doctrine and policy framework and recommended that ISOO, within the NARA, be charged with implementing and overseeing the new doctrine and policy. At the time of delivery of the policy framework, NARA voiced objections to undertaking the effort due to a lack of resources. The policy recommendation continued to be worked within DHS and the rest of government as part of the Program Manager for the Information Sharing Environment, which moved from DHS to the ODNI. While the executive order, rescission of the order, and subsequent policy structure worked their way through the government, the timeline for the study/ analysis, creation of a draft policy and framework, the political processes, and the resulting policy implementation lasted from 2005 through 2017. The study was lead by Grace Mastalli and Richard Russell.
