CTO for IT of the US federal space agency has resigned from his post, citing too few opportunities to enact change at the agency. Chris Kemp announced his resignation in a blog post on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's web site.

"Whereas I thought I had the best of both worlds being a Headquarters employee stationed in Silicon Valley, I actually had the worst of both worlds: no influence when I can't be in all of those meetings at NASA HQ, with no mandate to manage projects at Ames," Kemp wrote.

"As budgets kept getting cut and continuing resolutions from Congress continued to make funding unavailable, I saw my vision for the future slowly slip further from my grasp."

In addition to his role as NASA's CTO for IT, which he filled over the past five years, Kemp was also CIO at the agency's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. He has played a key role in enacting some of the most important IT initiatives of the past several years.

These initiatives include the launch of NASA's Nebula Cloud Computing project, development of the White House cloud-computing strategy and hosting the launch of Apps.gov, an online portal for cloud-based services procurement for federal agencies.

Kemp's first job at NASA was to help jumpstart the agency's relationships with the private sector and commercialize its data. This initiative led to collaboration with Google and Microsoft on making NASA data accessible through Google Earth and Microsoft's World Wide Telescope application.

Kemp wrote that the decision to leave NASA was not an easy one and took the past several months to make.

"I realized that most of my accomplishments at NASA were not at headquarters, but out in the field where I could roll up my sleeves and work on projects and get stuff done So, today, I am announcing that I am leaving the place I dreamed of working as a kid to find a garage in Palo Alto to do what I love."