FEDVIP sign-up fiasco
Update: According to a message on the OPM web site, the BENEFEDS sign-up system will remain open for ‘belated’ FEDVIP enrollments through next Friday, December 22.
I finally managed to sign up for the new Federal Employee Dental and Vision Insurance Program (FEDVIP) last night. For the last couple of weeks, the sign-up site, www.benefeds.com, has more often than not displayed error messages suggesting users try back during low volume periods. Unfortunately, the same error message tended to show up during those periods, too. Getting into the site didn’t always guarantee a successful sign-up, either. On four occasions, I got through the first dozen or so screens only to have the site freeze, meaning I had to start again from scratch. (Incredibly, the FEDVIP system requires users to enter all of their personal data when signing up rather than simply linking to data already stored in FEHBP or agency databases). BENEFEDS claims that this problem is due to firewalls used by the employees’ agencies, but I ran into the same problem at home, which would disprove that idea.
Although open season officially ended Monday, the sign-up system’s failure means that sign-ups are still being accepted, at least through today.
You can’t blame this fiasco on the USPS IT department- FEDVIP is run by the Bush Administration’s Office of Personnel Management, which contracted out the service to a joint venture owned by Met Life and John Hancock- apparently Halliburton was busy? And in vintage Bushspeak, the error message that appeared so often attributed the site’s failure not to incompetence or poor planning, but to its “tremendous success”!
Another ‘Mission Accomplished’! Heckuva job OPM!
