The Department of the Interior awarded a $95 million contract to NTT DATA Federal Services to modernize one of its critical information systems, the company announced April 28.
The five-year contract will modernize Interior’s Technical Information Management System, or TIMS, which automates business and regulatory functions for the department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management as well as its Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. The latter, BSEE, maintains the system.
Under the contract, NTT DATA will “provide operations support, infrastructure and application maintenance, security, cloud transformation and other IT services.”
TIMS was established in the 1990s, according to an Interior privacy impact assessment from 2018. The system supports the core mission of the two bureaus and enables the four regional offices and the Virginia headquarters to share and combine data, print maps, and standardize forms and other documents. The system is also used by the Office of Natural Resource Revenue, oil and gas stakeholders, and state and local governments.
"NTT DATA is honored to help the Department of the Interior take full advantage of new and emerging technologies to promote safety, protect the environment and conserve resources offshore,” said Tim Conway, NTT DATA’s president of public sector work. “Our team is committed to working with BSEE to deliver on their important mission of oversight and enforcement in these areas by leveraging automation, agile development and innovation to streamline operations.”
In the long term, the Interior Department wants to merge TIMS’ daily operations with the system’s maintenance cycle, while adding new developments, the NTT DATA news release said.
According to USAspending.gov, NTT DATA is a subprime contractor on several multimillion contracts with the departments of Justice and Homeland Security as well as the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Andrew Eversden covers all things defense technology for C4ISRNET. He previously reported on federal IT and cybersecurity for Federal Times and Fifth Domain, and worked as a congressional reporting fellow for the Texas Tribune. He was also a Washington intern for the Durango Herald. Andrew is a graduate of American University.
