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Alex Pettit, the chief information officer for the state of Oregon, resigned on Friday.
A plain-spoken Oklahoman, Pettit came to Oregon four years ago and took the top tech job when the state was wrestling with the failed online health insurance sign-up system, Cover Oregon.
In a terse letter to his boss, Gov. Kate Brown, Pettit listed a number of troubled technology projects that he'd helped triage, including helping state state reach a settlement with Cover Oregon's contractor, Oracle.
In his job, Pettit was responsible for providing technology to more than 40,000 state employees at more than 600 locations. That's a lot of turf, much of it jealously guarded.
Last year, for instance, Pettit teamed up with Oregon's universities to buy a dormant fiber-optic network, a move that frightened and threatened rural telecom providers.
Related: Oregon's Effort to Bring Fast Internet to "Digital Dust Bowls" Has Hit a Roadblock
He also oversaw the troubled implementation of a new $46 million state phone system, called Project MUSIC. Performance issues with the new system led the state to declare IBM, the system's contractor, in default earlier this year.
In an announcement of Pettit's departure, first reported by The Oregonian, Brown termed the decision "mutual," and said she'll conduct a national search for his replacement.
"I thank Alex for his work managing creative solutions for difficult problems," Brown said in a statement. "Alex's commitment to Oregonians was evident in his efforts to steer the Chief Information Officer's office towards customer-centered and innovative solutions."