Controlled Unclassified Information

Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) is a category of unclassified categories issued in a directive on May 9, 2008, by President George W. Bush. CUI replaces categories such as For Official Use Only (FOUO), Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU) and Law Enforcement Sensitive (LES) categories.

The Presidential memorandum designated the National Archives as responsible for overseeing and managing the implementation of the CUI framework. This memorandum has since been rescinded by Executive Order 13556 of November 4, 2010, and the guidelines previously outlined within it were expanded upon to improve uniformity across all Federal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, (H.R. 1323), 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.