Helpfulness of Family Deployment Links Depends on the User

The tabs on the MilitaryOneSource website for families are not broken as I reported yesterday, if the average user (that's me) understands the subtle nuances of that site.

A bar on the top of the page has a number of tabs including, Military Life & Deployment, Family & Recreation, Crisis & Disasters. When I clicked on them yesterday, I ended up on a blank page.

After spending some time on the phone today with Cynthia Smith, a very patient Pentagon spokeswoman, I realized that I either had to register for the site, or select a service branch in order to have links from those tabs populated. I find this neither user friendly nor intuitive, but maybe that's just me.

Links on another family and friends website, run by the Deployment Health Clinical Center, remain broken or useless. The Family Readiness Groups and Virtual Family link and the Warrior Care and Transition link still steer folks to the 2011 Army Posture Statement.

I have to read Army posture statements for this job and I find the exercise a tough slog. Pity the family members of deployed troops steered to it by mistake. Smith said a repair crew is fixing these links.