Despite two major thefts of data from millions of people that was stored at the Office of Personnel Management, the White House is confident that Katherine Archuleta is the “right person” to lead the federal government’s mammoth human resources department.
“The president does have confidence that she is the right person for this job,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Wednesday after some lawmakers, including House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, called for her head.
RELATED: Massive data breach followed ‘long history’ of failed IT systems at OPM
At an oversight hearing on Tuesday, Chaffetz said that Archuleta, director of the Office of Personnel and Management, “failed utterly and totally” to ensure that the sensitive information of more than 4 million current and former federal employees was secure. At that hearing, OPM’s inspector general said it had issued reports since 2007 saying the agency’s computer systems were not meeting federal standards for cybersecurity.
Earnest acknowledged that there is “a lot of work that needs to be done there” in terms of OPM tightening up it security, but said Archuleta was up to the task.
Archuleta refused to take responsibility for the breach, and when asked how well she’s done her job protecting personal data, she stammered and then said it’s a “whole of government” issue.
