Chaffetz Wants OPM CIO Seymour Removed; OPM Pushes Back
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, again asked the Office of Personnel Management to remove Chief Information Officer Donna Seymour, who he said is "unfit" to do her job. Despite repeated warnings from the Office of…
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the Inspector General, Seymour "failed to prevent breaches of personally-identifiable information," Chaffetz wrote in a letter sent Thursday to acting OPM Director Beth Cobert. "[Seymour's] failure put more than 22 million federal employees and other individuals at risk, and weakened our national security." Chaffetz cited a Dec. 2 IG "special review," which said "significant deficiencies existed" in how OPM's Office of Procurement Operations managed the award process of a credit monitoring and identity theft services contract. Chaffetz said "yet another IG report has found that Ms. Seymour failed to effectively fulfill her duties." OPM Press Secretary Sam Schumach sent us an email saying the agency awarded the contract on an expedited basis to protect millions of breach victims. "Although the OIG’s report describes several areas where the procurement process could have been improved -- some of which were proactively raised by OPM to OIG -- the OIG did not find that these issues affected the outcome of the award," Schumach wrote. "OPM has worked proactively with the OIG to address and correct deficiencies as they were identified, including those identified by OPM prior to the OIG’s engagement." Schumach also said since Seymour came to OPM in late 2013, it has "undertaken an aggressive effort to upgrade the agency’s cybersecurity posture, adding numerous tools and capabilities to its various legacy networks. These improvements were instrumental in helping Donna and her team identify the recent cybersecurity incidents."