FirstGov searches for a new search engine

On Tuesday, the General Services Administration called for bids for a new search engine for FirstGov, the one-stop Web portal touted as the citizen's window to the federal government. Built at the end of the Clinton administration, FirstGov is a joint project of the federal government and the private FedSearch Foundation, created by the software firm Inktomi Corp. of San Francisco to finance FirstGov at no cost to taxpayers. FirstGov averages 1 million visitors a month. GSA expects that to increase to 5.4 million visitors in the next five years, according to the request for proposals. Inktomi's contract ends on March 31. The new contract is for one year, and is renewable annually for up to four years. Proposals are due by Jan.17 and the contract will be awarded by Feb. 28. In the past, critics have complained about the public-private structure of FirstGov, arguing that the portal may be too reliant on the FedSearch search engine. Last year, one such critic, David LeDuke, public policy director for the Software and Industry Information Association (SIIA), said that reliance could give the upper hand to Inktomi during the bid process. "We're generally pleased that they are going through the open process of selecting the new partner," LeDuke said. "We still, though, would really like to see a little more clarity as to what the future is of FirstGov." According to LeDuke, SIIA is concerned that the government is putting the cart before the horse. "Partners are being sought without really outlining objectives and without laying out clearly what the endgame is," he said. "Even though they are going to select one provider, we would hope that wouldn't lead to unnecessarily high costs for other providers to access the database, which is what we saw under the previous FedSearch environment." Under the current contract, companies who want access to the URLs contained in the FirstGov database are provided access to the FedSearch database only for a significant fee. SIIA hopes that a new provider would allow more access at a marginal fee. Yahoo Inc., Phacil Inc., MarketUS Inc., Raytheon Company, AltaVista Software and Inktomi are some of the 60 contractors on GSA's bidder's list. Once selected, the new provider will come online on March 31.