The Office of Personnel Management has spent somewhat less than $1 million in emergency software, hardware and personnel upgrades during the past 3 weeks to correct a problematic rollout of USAJobs 3.0, a new version of the government's main job application website.

Nonetheless, OPM has not exceeded the $6 million cap it previously placed on development costs for the system, OPM Director John Berry said during a Nov. 3 call with reporters.  

Berry said he didn't have exact cost figures, but will likely present them in a couple weeks during an anticipated hearing on the system rollout before the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on federal workforce, U.S. Postal Service and labor policy.

OPM was able to draw on the extra funding it needed from a revolving fund agency users of the website have paid into over the previous years, says Kathy Dillaman, an OPM senior adviser. The $6 million development figure included a reserve amount for unanticipated problems, she said.

However, the 5 to 10 year projected agency savings of a few million dollars will likely be smaller than originally anticipated, Berry said. 

The system itself is now stabilized with major issues resolved, OPM officials said during the call, saying that 10 extra virtual servers and content load balancing has reduced user demand to 15 to 20 percent of capacity, rather than the 80 to 100 percent the system underwent during its crash-prone first weeks.

"We made some mistakes. And I want to first apologize to all applicants who had trouble over the past three weeks dealing with the bumps of starting a new system," Berry said.

Issues will likely continue to affect the system for the next few weeks, OPM officials said, but "it has gone from being a wave of critical system functionality issues to be very specific types of search issues that we're troubleshooting," Dillaman said.

OPM asked Google to do a "fresh eyes" assessment of USAJobs' search capacity Dillaman said. Search returns were returning some already-closed jobs and not all federal locations were findable via search. Some locations still remain outside the system, but will be added in the coming weeks, Dillaman added.
 
"There is no question that we got overwhelmed," Berry said.  

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