Partner picked to build FirstGov

AT&T Corp.'s GRC International Inc. and Autonomy Corp., a provider of

Internet infrastructure technology, announced a partnership last week to

help build the government Internet portal, FirstGov.

The FirstGov site — intended to make it easier for the public to find information

that the government has posted on the Internet — is expected to launch in

the fall. By December, the portal is expected to receive more than 2 million

visitors each day.

The General Services Administration selected GRCI along with Autonomy, AppNet

Inc. and Imagitas to provide the technical resources that will streamline

the aggregation and navigation of 100 million Web pages.

Based on the Federal Search Foundation database of all publicly available

federal Web pages, the GRCI-led effort will consist of

* An AT&T Web hosting center running on a Sun Microsystems Inc. platform.

* A user-friendly interface developed by AppNet.

* Advanced features such as natural language search queries and communities

of interest using Autonomy's software.

* Additional content and strategic direction provided by Imagitas.

"We're absolutely thrilled by the selection and being part of the initiative

to aggregate all the federal government pages, and part of streamlining

and efficiency for government in action to the average citizen," said David

Appelbaum, San Francisco-based Autonomy's U.S. general manager.

Financial terms of the agreement were being kept confidential at this time,

Appelbaum said.