Re: Peter principle
The head of a major federal (or state) agency like OPM is largely or even primarily a go-between - between the political masters in the executive and legislative branches and those in the agency, mostly senior civil servants with quite a lot of experience, some of it often both good and applicable to the cases at hand. They are not expected to engage much in day to day management, nor should they. They instead convey political and major policy direction to those who do, and advocate for the agency and its mission to executive branch personnel at the cabinet level and to congressional committees and their staffs. They spend the great majority of their time in meetings, much of it outside the agency. Agency directors are more likely in a well-run agency to get in trouble by intervening in operations than by doing their primary, political, job and letting the permanent civil service staff care for the details of policy implementation and daily operations Conversely, in a not-so-well run agency, the director can do little more to effect change than reassign personnel.
My sense is that in IT matters, OPM had been a mess for some time, and reassignment of the previous CIO (by the previous director) with no immediate replacement probably indicated that OPM management, their superiors in the executive branch, and their congressional overseers knew it. Archuleta took office eight months later, and appointed Seymour a few months later, by which time OPM had an acting CIO for eight or nine months and probably continuied to drift along whatever path led to removal of the prior CIO. To assign major blame to either or both of them is largely misplaced, and dismissing them as likely to perpetuate the damage as correct it.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
