OPM Top Official Resigns Under Pressure

U.S. Office of Personnel Management Chief Information Officer Donna Seymour has announced her resignation via an email to her colleagues, Reuters reported Monday (Feb. 22).

In the email message, which was seen by Reuters, Seymour described her departure as a “very tough decision,” adding that it was in the “agency’s best interest that my presence does not distract from the great work this team does every single day.”

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) has repeatedly expressed publicly the need for Seymour to step down from her role at OPM.

Chaffetz issued the following statement upon learning of Seymour’s impeding retirement:

“Ms. Seymour’s retirement is good news and an important turning point for OPM. While I am disappointed Ms. Seymour will no longer appear before our committee this week to answer to the American people, her retirement is necessary and long overdue. On her watch, whether through negligence or incompetence, millions of Americans lost their privacy and personal data. The national security implications of this entirely foreseeable breach are far-reaching and long-lasting. OPM now needs a qualified CIO at the helm to right the ship and restore confidence in the agency.”

Earlier this month, Chaffetz issued a subpoena for additional documentation relating to last year’s cybersecurity disaster.

Unfortunately, for those trying to get to the bottom of the OPM hack, which compromised the personal information of more than 21.5 million current and former federal workers and contractors, as well as nearly 5.6 million fingerprint files, this is not the first time OPM officials have been seen as uncooperative.

Last year, officials from OPM, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of Management and Budget were accused of purposely failing to attend a congressional briefing on Nov. 17 to examine how the agency handled the massive data breach.

“They refused to come,” Mac Thornberry, the committee’s Republican chairman, told reporters at the time. “I’ve never had anybody complain about it before.”

“If they are unwilling to come and answer questions about the biggest national security data breach we’ve ever had, then that does not inspire greater confidence,” Thornberry added.