There was no hint in the announcement made by Jack Lew, director of the Office of Management and Budget, that Kundra's exit was prompted by a shift in the White House's view on IT.

Lew, who praised the CIO's work, said Kundra was leaving to take a fellowship at Harvard.

Kundra was appointed CIO a few months after President Barack Obama took office. He immediately that adoption, use of consumer technologies, and making data available to the public on new sites, such as data.gov. He was critical of that moved too slowly and were at risk of failing.

But there may be questions over why Kundra is leaving six months after releasing a 25-point plan that crystalized a lot of his ideas. One of the major components of the plan was the of more than 2,100 data centers to 800 by 2015.

Ray Bjorklund, a senior vice president at FedSources, a market intelligence firm, gave Kundra "a lot of plaudits for really stirring things up," and said his actions were "very positive overall for the government."