The U.S. General Services Administration awarded AT&T Business Services a $2 million contract to provide the search engine for the newly redesigned FirstGov Web site at www.firstgov.gov. The one-year agreement includes four one-year options to renew.
AT&T Business Services, the telecommunications giant's division that provides business services to corporate customers, said it would power FirstGov's search engine through technology from Fast Search and Transfer Inc., Foster City, CA, a unit of Fast Search and Transfer ASA, Oslo, Norway. AT&T, which will launch its search engine April 1, is replacing Inktomi as the site's search provider.
The GSA said AT&T's technology would let the FirstGov site expand the number of Web sites of local, state and federal governments it indexes for information from the current 51 million. It also plans eventually to let consumers search government databases, PDF-format documents and other file formats, in addition to HTML documents.
FirstGov, the U.S. government's official Web portal, was redesigned in February to focus on channels for consumers, businesses and governments and added links to government transactions. The site was launched in September 2000.
