The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services CIO, Tony Trenkle, is stepping down this month amid the problematic rollout of the Healthcare.gov website.

CMS chief operating officer Michelle Snyder announced Trenkle’s departure, effective November 15, and some other management changes in an email to staff.

It’s not clear how involved Trenkle was with Healthcare.gov, but according to the CMS documents released by the House committee on oversight and government reform, he joined Snyder and others in approving a request in late September to put off a full security control assessment of the site for up to 90 days -- security now being one of several points of controversy related to the site’s design and launch.

[See also: What happened to Healthcare.gov?.]

Trenkle joined CMS in 2005, directing the Office of E-Health Standards and Services before becoming CIO and overseeing the agency’s $2 billion IT budget. He’s been a proponent of government shared services, and last year launched a three-year plan for enterprise shared services, including for identity management and business rules.

Trenkle has spent most of his career in the federal government, starting out as an intern in NASA’s telecom program, and then spending four years working for the satellite-based data network services company Spacenet. In 1988 he joined the General Services Administration, ending up leading the agency’s e-commerce office, and then in 1999 started working at the Social Security Administration, where he oversaw the rollout of online public services, including the first online Social Security application.

[See also: CMS chief pledges HealthCare.gov fix.]

Trenkle is now set to take a position in the private sector.

Replacing him as interim CIO, for the time being or perhaps long-term, will be Dave Nelson, who joined CMS in 2004 and currently directs the Office of Enterprise Management. A veteran of the Air Force, Nelson also worked in the private sector, co-founding two startups devoted to “last-mile” broadband access and working on satellite earth stations commissioning as operations VP for Loral-Orion.

Among other changes Snyder announced, Niall Brennan, the current director of the Office of Information Products and Data Analytics, will be taking Nelson’s role as acting director of enterprise management, and Tim Love, deputy center director in the Center for Medicare, has taken the position of acting deputy chief operating officer.