Downed Server Trashes 70,000 US Federal Job Applications

With unemployment at 9.1 per cent in the US, many are turning to (and relying on) the US government to help them out with jobs. This is great! Except when the federal jobs server goes down, erasing the hopes of 70,000 people. Oops.

Federal Times reports the USAJobs.gov outage, between August 9 and 12, affected 54 governmental agencies, who use the site to recruit. The Department of Health and Human Services chalked it up to “unscheduled maintenance”, which sounds like government-ese for “we f**ked up”. Now all 70,000 affected will have to reapply, and hope they fare just as well as they would have otherwise. [Federal Times via ITBusinessEdge]