Dear National Service Colleagues,

I am writing to give you an update on our technology systems and some related issues. After more than a week of all systems being up and stable, the President’s Day weekend saw our systems down for unrelated reasons, as Corporation headquarters offices experienced a power outage due to the failure of a transformer supplying power to our building. The building restored power on Tuesday afternoon and all network services -- including My AmeriCorps Portal, Recruitment System and eGrants -- were back up and stabilized within hours.

As a result of the power outage we extended the deadlines to Monday, February 25, 2008 for the following reports:

• Learn and Serve America: Continuation Applications and FSRs
• Senior Corps: Progress Reports and FSRs
• VISTA: Progress Reports and FSRs

Over the last 10 days I am pleased to report we have worked through the backlog of help desk tickets and we are now experiencing normal help desk volumes. In addition, this week we are developing a significant number of recruitment system fixes, including providing the ability to sponsors/grantees to select applicants, tying listings to programs, and adding search capabilities for grantees and sponsors into our improved testing environment. While we understand the urgency of putting these enhancements in place, we hope you understand the aggressive testing we feel is necessary prior to full release in order not to risk a repeat of system failure. We will keep you posted on release dates for these improvements.

Finally, as a result of our recent systems challenges, we are re-assessing the business needs and making decisions about the timing and roll-out of new functionality and tools related to recruitment and WBRS integration into eGrants. We will keep you posted on our decisions but want you to know we anticipate a delay from the originally envisioned late spring release of these tools.

Thanks again for your support and flexibility during this challenging time and please continue to refer to the Operating Status (www.nationalservice.gov/status) page if you experience difficulties with our systems.

Yours in Service,

David Eisner
CEO, Corporation for National and Community Service

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