WASHINGTON — The White House announced Monday the creation of the Office of Czar Oversight and Czar-Adjacent Policy Synchronization (OCOCAPS), a new executive body tasked with coordinating the activities of the federal government's existing 73 policy czars, at least four of whom, according to an internal audit, appear to have identical job descriptions.
Photo: White House, via wallpapers.com
The office will be led by a newly appointed Czar of Czar Coordination — the federal government's 74th czar — whose mandate is to ensure that the nation's existing czar infrastructure is functioning coherently, communicating effectively, and not, as an eleven-month memo exchange between the Drug Policy Czar and the Substance Management Czar appears to suggest, operating in active bureaucratic opposition to itself.
"This administration takes the full spectrum of policy coordination seriously," said White House Chief of Staff Sandra Hollis at a press briefing Monday. "And when an audit reveals that our czar ecosystem has grown to a size and complexity that no single czar — or indeed any cluster of czars — can fully comprehend, the responsible response is to appoint an additional czar to address that."
She confirmed that the new position carries a GS-15 salary, a dedicated staff of eleven, and a mandate to produce an initial coordination framework within 180 days, which will then be reviewed by a newly formed inter-czar advisory panel before taking effect.
The Audit: A Troubling Portrait of Czar Sprawl
The internal review, conducted by the Office of Management and Budget over seven months, found that the federal government's czar apparatus — which encompasses positions created across multiple administrations dating back to the Clinton era — had expanded to a degree that no existing accountability structure could adequately map.
Of the 73 active czars, 61 reported that they had never had a formal meeting with another czar. Forty-four said they were unaware of the full list of current czar positions. Seventeen indicated that they had, at some point, issued guidance that may have conflicted with guidance issued by a different czar, though most said they had not been informed of this at the time.
The most significant finding concerned the Drug Policy Czar and the Substance Management Czar, whose offices — located in separate buildings and apparently unaware of each other's specific mandates — had been issuing contradictory federal memos on opioid prescription monitoring protocols since last January. The contradiction was discovered not by either office, nor by any oversight body, but by a pharmacist in Akron, Ohio, who filed a complaint after receiving two official federal directives that were, in her words, "saying the exact opposite thing."
Both czars, when notified of the conflict, expressed surprise that the other position existed.
A Partial List of Current Czars
The White House declined to release a complete czar directory, citing ongoing organizational review, but the audit document — obtained through a Freedom of Information request filed before this article was written, in a remarkable coincidence — contains a partial list of active positions. A selection follows:
The Drug Policy Czar. Coordinates federal drug policy. Has been in conflict with the Substance Management Czar for eleven months.
The Substance Management Czar. Coordinates federal substance management policy. Has been in conflict with the Drug Policy Czar for eleven months. Neither office has confirmed what the operational difference between these two roles is.
The Opioid Response Czar. Coordinates the federal opioid response. Auditors noted "significant portfolio overlap" with both of the above positions but confirmed all three are currently occupied by different people who have not met.
The AI Czar. Coordinates federal artificial intelligence policy. When contacted by auditors, the AI Czar's office responded with a 47-page framework document and a request for clarification on what, specifically, the audit was trying to find out.
The Cyber Czar. Coordinates federal cybersecurity. Currently in a jurisdictional dispute with the Digital Infrastructure Czar over who is responsible for federal agency password policies.
The Digital Infrastructure Czar. See above.
The Supply Chain Czar. Coordinates federal supply chain resilience. The audit noted that this position was created in 2021 and has produced fourteen reports, none of which have been formally acknowledged by any other czar.
The Food Supply Chain Czar. Coordinates federal food supply chain resilience. When asked how this role differs from the Supply Chain Czar's mandate, a spokesperson said the distinction was "important and would be clarified in upcoming guidance."
The Climate Czar. Coordinates federal climate policy across agencies. Has issued 23 memos this year. The audit found that nine were not received by their intended recipients because the distribution list had not been updated since 2019.
The Fentanyl Czar. Portfolio appears substantially similar to those of the Drug Policy Czar, the Substance Management Czar, and the Opioid Response Czar. All four positions are currently filled. None of the four officeholders could, when surveyed, name all of the other three.
Introducing the 74th Czar
The newly appointed Czar of Czar Coordination is Margaret Elaine Forsythe, a former deputy director of the Office of Personnel Management with 22 years of federal administrative experience and what a White House spokesperson described as "an unusually high tolerance for organizational complexity."
Photo: Margaret Elaine Forsythe, via cache.legacy.net
Forsythe's office will be responsible for maintaining a live registry of all czar positions, facilitating quarterly inter-czar summits, identifying and flagging policy contradictions before they reach the stage of being discovered by pharmacists in Ohio, and producing an annual Czar Coordination Report to be submitted to Congress.
"I am honored to serve," Forsythe said in a prepared statement. "The work of policy coordination is foundational to effective governance, and I look forward to building the structural frameworks necessary to ensure that our czar community is functioning as a coherent, collaborative, and mutually aware ecosystem."
She noted that her first priority would be scheduling introductory calls with all 73 existing czars, a process her office estimated would take approximately four months given scheduling constraints, and that she would not be issuing any formal guidance until those conversations were complete.
Expert Analysis
"This is genuinely not the worst idea," said Dr. James Wellford of the Center for Executive Branch Organization and Governance Studies, with the careful phrasing of a man choosing every word deliberately. "The czar model has always been somewhat ad hoc — positions get created in response to crises, mandates overlap, nobody retires them when the crisis passes. Having a coordination function is, in theory, sensible."
He paused. "The question is whether the appropriate response to having too many uncoordinated czars is to add a czar. And I think reasonable people can disagree on that."
When asked whether a 75th czar might eventually be needed to manage the workload of the 74th, Wellford said he was not going to answer that question.
One Final Note
The White House confirmed Monday that a job posting for the Deputy Czar of Czar Coordination has been listed on USAJobs.gov since last Wednesday — four days before the Czar of Czar Coordination position was publicly announced.
A spokesperson said this was "a standard sequencing matter" and that the Deputy Czar would report directly to the Czar of Czar Coordination once that individual had completed her onboarding, reviewed the audit, and scheduled her initial 73 introductory calls.
The application deadline is in six weeks. The position requires a minimum of five years of experience in federal policy coordination. Experience coordinating czars is listed as preferred but not required, on the basis that nobody has any.
