Circular A-130 was first issued in December 1985 to meet information resource management requirements that were included in the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) of 1980.
[1] The initial release of the Circular provided a policy framework for information resources management (IRM) across the Federal government.
Since the time of the Circular's first release in 1985, Congress has enacted several additional laws and OMB issued several guidance documents that related to information technology management in federal agencies.
[6] As expressed in the US Federal CIO Council's Architecture Alignment and Assessment Guide (2000), Circular A-130 can be thought of as a "one-stop shopping document for OMB policy and guidance on information technology management".
A-130 establishes official OMB policy and guidance on information technology management for federal executive agencies based on the following laws, Executive Orders, and prior OMB guidance documents: Laws: Executive Orders: Other OMB circulars: Prior OMB guidance documents: (All below have been rescinded after incorporation of guidance content into A-130):[8] Any information that the information system uses that is classified automatically requires the system to have National security emergency preparedness guidelines that conform to Executive Order 12472.