Feds Take USAjobs.gov Back From Monster, Performance Tanks
dcblogs writes "Complaints about the performance of USAjobs.gov, the government's central website for job applicants, are piling up after the U.S. took control this month of the site from Monster.com. The government's official Facebook page has seen nothing but negative comments from users about lag time, search engine failures, and other problems since the U.S. Office of Personnel Management built a new site. The government employs more than 2.6 million people. Linda Rix, the co-CEO of Avue Technologies Corp., a federal contractor who has tested the site, said this about the federal effort: 'They are a personnel management agency, they are not a technology company, and this clearly demonstrates that they don't have the technology skills to be able to do this.'" They're working on it, though — one of their recent Facebook updates says, "Quick update: The three new blade servers have increased our capacity and the system is running smoothly."
Well consider yourself lucky. I have a nephew on Kaiser. He was apparently born with a heart defect that manifested itself around his 1st birthday. Kaiser does not have a specialist who is licensed and board certified to perform heart surgery on a child under 2 years old. So, rather than pay the cost to have him get the surgery the acknowledge he will definitely need, they make him stay in the hospital for 5 weeks while they try various medicines that are somewhat dangerous to take, until they found a medicine that would keep the problem under control until he is old enough for a Kaiser doctor to perform the surgery. I'm glad I don't have Kaiser..
My son needed a surgery for craniosynostosis, that would be best performed at age 3 months. My husband was just in the process of changing insurance due to a new job, and we had chosen Kaiser until the pediatrician warned us that Kaiser didn't have a surgeon qualified to do that surgery, that we'd have to wait until he was 6 months and have a much riskier surgery. Fortunately, the paperwork hadn't gone through, so we made some urgent changes and got Blue Shield. The surgeon covered by them happened to be the one who pioneered the endoscopic version of the surgery my son needed.
This surgery meant a significantly shorter recovery time, and no blood transfusion. One night in the hospital was required, a second allowed at my request. The version for six months olds would have required a blood transfusion, much more time in the hospital and a more difficult recovery. I'm ecstatic we didn't go Kaiser.