Donna K. Seymour, the head of cybersecurity for the government's human resources, resigned on Monday, according to NBC News.
The news came two days before she was scheduled to appear before Congress to talk about last year's hacks of federal personnel records.
Seymour, the chief information officer for the Office of Personnel Management, characterized her departure in a letter to colleagues 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."
Seymour is a respondent named in a lawsuit last year by the American Federation of Government Employees. The group alleges that she was negligent in protecting the personal data of around 18 million current and former government employees
