Updated: Efforts by the Office of Personnel Management to rectify technical problems with its new USAJobs site may have made matters worse, according to a Federal Computer Week report, as agency officials continue to work around the clock to remedy the customer complaints.

Users trying to apply for jobs on the USAJobs search website have continued to encounter extended timeouts, lost data and incorrect results since the site was relaunched last week.

OPM officials said the new system had been overwhelmed by users. In an effort to help spread the volume, the site had installed a buffer application that attempted to block 6% of incoming traffic on their first attempt. However, Linda Rix, co-chief executive of Avue Technologies Corp., which provides job application services to federal agencies, said based on her company’s authorized tests of the USAJobs system, out of 100 tries, the failure rate was 86%, according to the FCW report.

OPM Associate Director Angela Bailey said today, “USAJOBS 3.0 continues to make steady progress with the new site since its implementation last week. As of Wednesday afternoon, over 180,000 applications are successfully submitted through the new site, 38,067 in the last 24 hour period. Technical teams are working hard to ensure these numbers continue to increase.”

“A common issue among users” she said, “as described on our social media is the extra steps involved with resetting their password. Safeguarding an applicant’s personal information is a top priority and a necessary part of the new website.”

We have also successfully added more hardware capacity to the site including three servers to improve search functionality and job posting. We will continue to work around the clock to assure USAJobs 3.0 provides the best customer service to our millions of applicants and dozens of federal agencies.”

On Tuesday, USAJobs officials “amplified our social media messaging to request people who have been temporarily turned away to hit the refresh button on their browser or the F5 function key…to free up their computer to access the new USAJobs site.”

The technology used to operate the website was completely rebuilt from the ground up over the past 18 months. It also involved moving the job listings and applications data from a system managed by Monster.com and which relied on proprietary software platforms, to one that OPM will now manage which relies on open source software. The new system should ultimately be more flexible and less expensive to operate, and had promised to make applying for federal jobs, among other tasks, easier for end users.

“Before, applicants often had to type in the same information over and over again for each job they applied to,” for instance, said Bailey. “Under USAJOBS 3.0, they can type in that information once and apply to as many jobs as they’d like.”

Thousands of users have complained of problems on USASearch.gov’s and the agency’s social media pages.