Who is supposed to approve a new messaging app like Signal or WhatsApp before employees use it for work?

There is no single universal officer who “owns” this decision. Approving a new messaging tool for work is a shared responsibility, and the right answer depends on whether you work in a government agency, a regulated business, or a private company. In every setting, though, the principle is the same: a communication tool should not be adopted for official business until the organization can capture, retain, and produce the records it generates.

The roles usually involved

Most organizations route a tool like Signal or WhatsApp through several stakeholders before approving it:

• Records or information governance officer — confirms that messages can be retained according to applicable schedules and are not lost when they auto-delete or stay on a personal device.
• Legal and compliance — assesses litigation hold, e-discovery, and regulatory obligations.
• IT and information security — evaluates encryption, data residency, account control, and whether the tool can be managed and exported.
• Privacy officer — reviews handling of personal or sensitive data.
• Executive or agency leadership — gives the final business sign-off and authorizes the policy.

In federal agencies, the senior agency official for records management and the agency records officer typically lead this review, working with the CIO and general counsel. Adoption is generally formalized through written policy, not an individual’s informal “yes.”

Why approval matters

A work-related message is a record based on its content and the function it documents, not on the app it was sent through. If employees adopt a tool on their own, the organization may be unable to preserve those messages, which creates real exposure under recordkeeping laws and public-records or freedom-of-information requests. Features like disappearing messages and end-to-end encryption can be especially problematic when records must be retained or produced.

Practical guidance

If you are an employee, the safe answer is to assume a messaging app is not approved for work until your records, IT, and legal teams say so in writing. If you are setting policy, document who must approve new tools, what conditions they must meet, and how messages will be captured and retained before rollout.

For more on managing text and chat communications, see the email and messaging topic hub.