White House confirms OMB director's departure
Peter Orszag, OMB director, will step down sometime in the next few weeks.
The White House this afternoon confirmed that Peter Orszag will step down director of the Office of Management and Budget, according to several wire reports.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs didn't give a timeline about Orszag's departure but said he would leave before the administration begins to write its next budget, the Associated Press reports.
"Peter has served alongside and within a valuable economic team that has faced the greatest economic crisis any president has faced since the great depression. It is an enormous task," Gibbs told the AP.
Earlier this morning, an OMB official had nothing to say about a report about Orszag's resignation.
Orszag was confirmed to his position in March 2009. Prior to that he was director of the Congressional Budget Office. He would be the first of President Barack Obama’s Cabinet members to leave.
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Orszag: Closing IT gap leads to responsible government
Under Orszag's leadership, OMB has pushed officials to use information technology as a way to make government agencies more efficient, specifically through various dashboards that are online for the public to review. In a recent speech, he said the government needs to close the technology gap between the federal government and the private sector.
"Closing the IT gap is perhaps the single most important step we can take in creating a more efficient and responsive government," Orszag said in a speech earlier this month. “Indeed, it is the key differentiator between our effort to modernize and reform government and those that have come before.”