Aquilent Wins Contract for FirstGov.gov Refresh; Aquilent Awarded Contract to Provide Services to Design and Test the User Experience, Information Architecture and Branding for FirstGov.gov and FirstGov en Espanol

Business Wire, Oct 5, 2005

LAUREL, Md. -- Aquilent, Inc. today announced today the award of a contract from the GSA Office of Citizen Services and Communication (OCSC) to provide services to design and test the user experience, information architecture, and branding for FirstGov.gov and FirstGov en Espanol (espanol.gov). The initial purchase order for the site refresh is valued at $836,000, with four option years.

Aquilent's web and user experience teams will work with OCSC's FirstGov team to refresh the look and feel, branding, design, and navigation of both sites. The team will research public expectations and use industry best practices for the site redesign to improve the appearance, citizen satisfaction, and appropriate cultural elements.

FirstGov.gov was launched in September 2000 and provides the only cross-agency, cross-branch, intergovernmental consolidation of government web service and information in the United States. With more than 550 pages of content and 21,000 external links, FirstGov.gov has been very popular since its launch. According to the Marketleap Search Engine Marketing Tool, the site is the 6th most linked-to site on the internet with 78 million visitors and 203 million page views in FY04.

"Aquilent has always felt a strong pride in FirstGov and much of our work for other federal web sites has its roots in our work with GSA on the original launch of FirstGov," said David Fout, Aquilent's President and CEO. "We are excited by this partnership created between Aquilent and OCSC and look forward to achieving award-winning and world-class results together."

For the FirstGov.gov Refresh contract, Aquilent will serve as the prime contractor and have two subcontractors, Captura Group, a pioneer in the development of in-language and in-culture Hispanic online solutions, and Shugoll Research, a woman-owned full-service market research firm specializing in qualitative and quantitative research, operating a research and usability facility, in Bethesda, MD.

About Aquilent

Aquilent is an award-winning company with a 25-year history of providing innovative information technology and web-based services to federal agencies. Aquilent improves the quality and efficiency of service to citizens, employees, and businesses through a premiere suite of solutions and services, including enterprise acquisition and finance solutions, public and private web presence, regulatory management solutions, and information management and access systems. Additional information about Aquilent is available at www.aquilent.com.

About Captura Group

Since 1999, Captura Group has pioneered the development of in-language and in-culture Hispanic online solutions, enabling leading companies and organizations to connect with Hispanics online. From research and strategy development to online program execution, Captura Group's work spans across different languages and cultures but has one thing in common: measurable results that make a difference to the client's business and their online stakeholders.

Balancing business objectives while delivering customer value is at the heart of Captura Group's user-centered design philosophy. Captura Group's bilingual and bicultural team brings an innate understanding of Hispanics' cultural predispositions as well as their linguistic challenges in order to develop online solutions that address Hispanics' cultural issues while communicating with them in their language of choice. Additional information about Captura Group is available at www.capturagroup.com.

About Shugoll Research

Shugoll Research is a woman-owned full-service market research firm with more than 48 years of experience in conducting qualitative and quantitative research. Shugoll's years of experience operating a research facility and conducting qualitative research locally and nationwide, including many usability tests, means that Shugoll Research understands the procedures involved and the quality control mechanisms employed to obtain high-quality research on any project. Shugoll Research has extensive experience conducting usability tests where respondents go online to evaluate Web sites and Web-based applications, and operates a recently renovated state-of-the-art research facility in Bethesda, Maryland.