Office of American Innovation

The Office of American Innovation is best understood through its ending. It was launched with unusual fanfare for a White House staff shop — a presidential memorandum, a “SWAT team” billing, a roster of Silicon Valley billionaires — and then, four years later, a federal official confirmed it had “produced few public results during its four years in operation,” had been “closed down during the transition,” and that there were no plans to revive it (Nextgov/FCW). That arc was not an accident: by its own staff’s admission in 2018, the office was designed as a temporary consultancy that would “sunset at the end of the administration,” “not to be a permanent fixture to the executive branch” (Nextgov/FCW). Most profiles of the office cover only the 2017 launch; the verified record of its lifecycle is the story competitors have not told.

Creation: a memorandum and a son-in-law

President Donald Trump created the office on March 27, 2017, by presidential memorandum issued late that afternoon (Nextgov/FCW). It was headed by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and Senior Advisor to the President, who ran it for its entire existence — the innovation-office hat he wore alongside his Middle East and domestic-policy portfolios (Nextgov/FCW, Government Technology).

The memorandum’s mission language was sweeping: the office would make policy recommendations and report directly to Trump on ways to “improve government operations and services, improve the quality of life for Americans now and in the future and spur job creation,” incorporating “information, ideas and experiences from other parts of government, from the private sector and from other thought leaders and experts outside of the federal government” (Nextgov/FCW). White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the office would “apply the president’s ahead-of-schedule-and-under-budget mentality” to the government (Associated Press via Jamaica Gleaner). The announcement came at a low point in the young administration — days after the House Republican bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act imploded — with the office framed as a way to wrangle policy creation toward the executive branch (Associated Press via Jamaica Gleaner, Government Technology).

The early personnel signaled the office’s character. Among those working on the effort were National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, Dina Powell (senior counselor for economic initiatives and deputy national security adviser), Chris Liddell (assistant to the president for strategic initiatives), and Reed Cordish (assistant to the president for intragovernmental and technology initiatives) — all, the reporting noted, with extensive business experience (Associated Press via Jamaica Gleaner). The memorandum also set the office up to consult with the Office of Management and Budget director, Mick Mulvaney, and the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and listed as members the chief of staff and the assistants to the president for economic policy, domestic policy, strategic initiatives, and strategic communications (Nextgov/FCW).

The tech-industry “SWAT team”

The office was described internally as a “SWAT team” of consultants — executives recruited from the commercial world, per Washington Post reporting cited at the time (Nextgov/FCW). The White House planned to work with chief executives from prominent tech businesses, including Tesla’s Elon Musk, Apple’s Tim Cook, Salesforce’s Marc Benioff, and Microsoft’s Bill Gates (Nextgov/FCW). GovTech’s launch coverage added that Trump took pride in the fact that the team’s members had little or no political experience, and that tech figures such as Cook, Gates, Musk, and Benioff had been in contact with the office (Government Technology).

Kushner’s own framing was maximalist. “The government should be run like a great American company,” he told the Washington Post, adding: “We should have excellence in government. Our hope is that we can achieve successes and efficiencies for our customers, who are the citizens” (Government Technology). The office was expected to focus on technology and data, and in some cases to direct certain government services toward privatization — while in other cases it would function as a “service organization” offering solutions rather than dictating changes to departments (Government Technology).

Initial projects, per the launch reporting, were to include revamping the Veterans Affairs Department, modernizing federal IT, redesigning government workforce training, and tackling the opioid crisis (Nextgov/FCW). Spicer named the same early priorities: modernizing federal technology and overhauling Veterans Affairs (Associated Press via Jamaica Gleaner).

Beside — not above — the existing tech offices

One of the first questions the launch raised was what OAI meant for the federal tech groups created under President Obama: the White House’s U.S. Digital Service (USDS), itself once described as a tech-troubleshooting SWAT team, and 18F, the digital consultancy housed within the General Services Administration (Nextgov/FCW). Both recruited private-sector technologists heavily and worked on modernizing federal IT; USDS staff had been building Vets.gov, a site meant to consolidate the more than 1,000 websites housing veterans benefits (Nextgov/FCW).

Kushner, for his part, had publicly signaled support for those groups. In an internal email to 18F staff dated January 9, 2017, obtained by Nextgov, he wrote that “continued dedication to modernizing government tech is a mission critical task and we look forward to working with the many talented, dedicated tech professionals” in offices such as USDS, the Technology Transformation Service that houses 18F, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the U.S. chief information officer’s staff (Nextgov/FCW). Trump’s transition team had been “completely supportive” of federal tech projects, Rob Cook — a former Pixar executive heading the Technology Transformation Service — wrote in that same email thread (Nextgov/FCW).

The office’s mission was read as broader than USDS or 18F’s — and “very closely aligned to the power centers at the White House,” in the assessment of David Eagles, director of the Center for Presidential Transition at the Partnership for Public Service (Nextgov/FCW). Eagles added a note of caution: “ideas and good solutions can be easy, but connecting them to a good management plan where execution happens is most important,” and business executives might find the federal government subject to unique pressures, including fluctuating budgets and bureaucratic demands (Nextgov/FCW).

The opacity chapter

By 2018, questions about what the office actually did had reached the Senate. In an April 25 letter to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, Senators Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and Gary Peters (D-Mich.) asked for documentation on the office’s activities — a list of all private-sector partners it had met with and the dates, a list of all current and former staffers, and details of the office’s budget (FedScoop).

The senators’ letter cited a BuzzFeed article in which a dozen people inside or close to the White House told a reporter they had “no real idea” what OAI did (FedScoop). There had been some public activity — OAI’s involvement in IT modernization efforts, including the administration’s IT Modernization Report, and the Centers of Excellence initiative launched with GSA — but the letter also flagged the recent departures of Reed Cordish and spokesperson Josh Raffel, stating: “This high level of turnover raises concerns about the effectiveness of the office” (FedScoop). Its conclusion was blunt: “The goal of OAI is admirable, but these recent reports suggest that rather than encouraging efficiency in government, the office is potentially a vehicle for cronyism and waste” (FedScoop). The White House did not respond to requests for comment (FedScoop).

Built to expire

Weeks after the senators’ letter, the office’s own staff confirmed that permanence was never the plan. At a May 24, 2018 event hosted by IBM, Matt Lira — a presidential adviser on tech issues and a member of OAI — said the office, established via presidential memorandum in March 2017, was intended to “sunset at the end of the administration” (Nextgov/FCW). The intent, he said, was “not to be a permanent fixture to the executive branch” but rather to act as a “consultancy” on tech and modernization issues — while its real goal was to make long-term changes at the agency level that would outlast its tenure (Nextgov/FCW).

“The long-term capacity for change should be built into the agencies themselves,” Lira said. “That’s where the heart of government is in terms of the systems” (Nextgov/FCW). He pointed to the Centers of Excellence being organized by the General Services Administration as an example of “an enduring, long-term structure,” and to the executive order strengthening agency CIO authority as having a lasting impact (Nextgov/FCW).

The quiet closure

The plan held. When the Biden administration took over, the Office of American Innovation did not survive the transition. In a March 2021 interview with Nextgov, Deputy Federal CIO Maria Roat was asked about the office’s fate; her answer was brief: “That was certainly with the prior administration.” She said it was closed down during the transition and that there were no current plans to revive it or anything similar (Nextgov/FCW).

The verdict on its record was equally brief: the Kushner-led effort “produced few public results during its four years in operation,” with its two accomplishments named as helping develop the administration’s IT Modernization Plan and establishing the Centers of Excellence within the General Services Administration — “both accomplished in its first year of existence” (Nextgov/FCW). An office announced as a SWAT team of business minds charged with remaking government ended as a footnote: temporary by design, questioned mid-life, and closed without ceremony when its president left office.

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not claim a specific closure date — the sources read say only that the office was closed “during the transition.” It does not assert that any OAI functions were transferred to surviving offices such as the U.S. Digital Service, since no source read in full establishes that. It does not rely on the office’s later-year activities — the May 2017 tech-CEO summit, the VA’s electronic health records work, and the apprenticeship executive order — because those appear only in sources not read in full this session. The 2021 statement that there were “no plans to revive” the office came from Biden-era officials and may not reflect the current administration’s posture. And it does not repeat the queue’s shorthand that Kushner “headed the office as senior adviser” beyond what the record shows: he headed it as the president’s son-in-law and Senior Advisor to the President, from its creation until its closure.