Seymour, Donna
Office of Personnel Management (OPM) data breach Chief
Information Officer (CIO), Dec 2013 – Feb 2016.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS), position unknown, 2016?
– present.
Little IT education. Only a BS in computer science
(she claims) from a low-ranked college. Even from a good
university that is not enough for a large organization's
CIO.
$183,300 was Seymour's most recent annual salary
as
OPM CIO as of Sep 2015 according to my FOIA request (Feb
2019) to the OPM. She supposedly retired in Feb 2016 after
nearly 40 years as a federal employee and after allowing OPM's
massive data breach in 2014, but my FOIA request also revealed
that at least as of Sep 2017, probably earlier, she worked for
DHS, and as of Jun 2018 her most recent annual salary there
was
$189,600. Both her recent increased salary at DHS
and her salary as OPM CIO are outrageous. Many doctors and
lawyers don't make that much and, unlike Seymour, they are at
least qualified; by law they have to be.
In one of the most massive data breaches of its time, up to
2014, Seymour let hackers steal the very sensitive personnel
records of millions of government employees, including those
in defense and intelligence, which is a continuing security
risk. When the data breach was finally made public she was
not fired. There was external pressure for her to resign but
she ignored this right up until she was called to testify
before Congress, when she finally resigned. She refused to
accept responsibility for the devastating consequences of her
IT incompetence; in the face of overwhelming evidence to the
contrary she insisted she did a great
job.
Unbelievably, Seymour was replaced as OPM CIO with another IT
incompetent,
David
Garcia.