Donna Seymour, OPM’s chief information officer, resigned February 23, just two days before she was scheduled to go before Congress and discuss last year’s OPM data breach which compromised more than 20 million federal employees’ personal data. Seymour described her resignation as a retirement, saying, “It is in the agency’s best interest that my presence does not distract from the great work this team does every single day.” But House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, who previously called for Seymour’s resignation, claims that Seymour and then-OPM Director Kathleen Archuleta were negligent and “ignored warnings from the OPM’s Office of Inspector General about the vulnerability of the agency’s electronic systems.”
After canceling the Wednesday committee hearing, Chaffetz said, “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.”