Regulations.gov crashes for second time

The official online portal for regulatory activity crashed for the second time in less than a week on Monday as technical difficulties continued to plague the federal government website. 

Regulations.gov, which serves both as the government’s clearinghouse for information about pending federal rules and a receptacle for public comments, was down for more than four hours, from at least 7 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. There was no clear indication when the problems might be fixed.

“We experienced temporary technical difficulties and are working to restore full operations as soon as possible,” a message tells visitors to the site, which was launched a decade ago to make the federal rule-making system more accessible to ordinary Americans.

The site went down last Monday evening, and was not up and running again until Wednesday afternoon, The Hill reported last week.

The problems with Regulations.gov come as the administration faces a major backlash over ObamaCare’s troubled enrollment portal. The administration said last week that the outages at Healthcare.gov would likely persist in the coming weeks, as officials work to repair the site.