Twenty days after its missed relaunch date, the Pentagon's military spouse scholarship portal is back online.
The Military Spouse Career Advancement Accounts (MyCAA) scholarship program, managed through the Defense Department's Military OneSource website, gives eligible spouses up to $4,000 in tuition assistance for certain types of courses.
To use the program, spouses must complete an online application process. But the site encountered a major server problem during an update outage originally scheduled to run from July 19 to July 27.
Those "serious issues" with its host servers forced the site to stay dark for much longer than originally planned, officials said.
"The department has been aggressively working to restore the MyCAA application and, while progress is being made, the timeline for completion will depend on the resolution of several technical issues encountered during system restoration," Jessica Maxwell, a Defense Department spokesperson, told Military.com in an email Aug. 6. "Unfortunately, military spouses have been unable to access the MyCAA website since the system went down."
Officials had developed a workaround by phone for spouses needing to access MyCAA information or resources.
The site was restored Aug. 15 on its new URL, MyCAA.militaryonesource.mil.
Some users may receive a "security certificate" or "privacy" notice when attempting to access the site -- a warning that is not uncommon on Defense Department websites. Those users should ignore the message and proceed to the site.
See more about how MyCAA works and what's currently covered.
-- Amy Bushatz can be reached at amy.bushatz@military.com.
