US Government to Spend $50 Billion on Internet Technology Projects

The US Government announced that will offer a 50 billion dollar contract to 29 companies for different IT related projects. Among these companies we can find AT&T or Electronic Data Systems.

The contract will be on a period of minimum five years, with the option to prolong it after, said the US General Services Administration, the agency that is involved in contracting such services, with out giving a lot of information on what the projects will be about. The government will hire 29 companies from the IT industry that will provide computers, hardware parts, software programs, and IT services for the US administration.

The 50 billion dollars that the contract will be paid with is basically the investment budget that is available for the next period of time, also the process of selecting the companies is still in the works, but some of the companies that are on the list are known. The most important of them is EDS, which is a well know outsourcing service provider on the market.

Because the products or services that will be provided are not mentioned yet, there is no way we can estimate the sum of the profits that these companies will benefit from. The only thing that is a known fact for now is that 50 billion dollars will be spent on this, and will be distributed to 29 companies from the IT world.

This new contract continues the cooperation between the public and the private sector, started with the Millenia contract started by the General Services Administration, in value of 20 billion dollars. Also there was a 13 billion dollar contract between GSA Application & Support and several IT companies providing e-government software application, technical support, and training for the public sector workers.

EDS will offer IT solutions for the American federal agencies, IT applications and the necessary infrastructure for these to function correctly. Also services for migrating from the old platforms that were used, to new and more reliable ones, integrating the newly created systems and other related services.
"We have dedicated people, and also 45 years of experience in this domain, so we are better placed in the race for this contract", declared an EDS official.

Another company that will be probably on the government's list is AT&T, because the company has the necessary technology that is needed for the services that are to be provided. A special division was developed inside AT&T, called AT&T Government Solutions which will provide IT services for the public sector, respectively secure communications for the federal agencies.

For now, the list of the companies is not ready yet, but the race is on for what companies will get a part of this huge investment.

Source: Yahoo News