DOI agency awards financial systems support contract

Information technology systems that pay royalties to the Treasury Department and state, local and American Indian-owned lands will get support through a contract the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service awarded to Accenture.Under the contract, which could last 10 years and be worth $90 million to $100 million, the company will manage the service’s royalty financial systems. Accenture also won the previous seven-year, $47 million contract to support the financial system in 1999.The agency collects and pays royalties from energy production that occurs on federal and Indian lands. The service relies largely on automated financial systems to do so, and distributes an average of $9 billion annually – more than $170 billion since 1982.Agency Director Randall Luthi said that the contract “incorporates several improvements over the previous version [and] will ensure that MMS maintains [its] state-of-the-art computing capabilities.”