GSA terminates Open Government Federal Advisory Committee

The General Services Administration on Tuesday terminated the Open Government Federal Advisory Committee as part of President Donald Trump’s call to reduce the federal bureaucracy, according to an email obtained by FedScoop. 

In an email to committee members, designated federal officers Arthur Brunson and Daniel York said the decision to terminate the group came after careful consideration and “reflects the evolving priorities of the new administration.” The decision is, according to Brunson and York, in compliance with President Trump’s recent executive order focused on the reduction of federal bureaucracy. 

Daniel Schuman, the committee’s chair, told FedScoop in an interview that the termination came without warning but followed the cancellation of an OG FAC meeting in early February. Schuman said that he and others were not sure at the time if the committee was ending or just pausing. 

“The ending of the advisory committee in the circumstances of what’s happening generally across the U.S. government is another example of the democratic backsliding that is happening under the Trump administration,” Schuman said. “Where they’re destroying the independent mechanisms that exist to hold the government accountable and to push for more transparency.”

The OG FAC was meant to serve as an advisory body to the GSA administrator on federal open government and public engagement efforts, according to the committee’s website. Additionally, the committee was chartered to advise the agency chief on open government matters like anti-corruption, digital governance, access to information, government service delivery and more. 

The committee, first launched in April 2024, was tasked with developing the sixth national action plan to increase access to government data, making government records more accessible and engaging the public.

Schuman said the committee had just figured out how it would determine priorities for those action items, and was in the process of inviting individuals from civil society and other advisory groups to come speak to them. 

“We’d reach out to other experts and stakeholders to speak with us, as well about what they thought should be included in the national action plan,” Schuman said. “We were moving towards identifying what we thought should be in [the plan] and making those recommendations …. That’s where we were going to be in the next couple months.”