VIENNA, Va. -- AT&T Government Solutions has been awarded a contract to design, implement and manage an advanced network for the Internal Revenue Service to integrate and standardize communications technology deployed at IRS sites across the United States. The value of the 5-year contract could exceed $54 million.

The new Enterprise Remote Access Project (ERAP) is based on a fully managed AT&T virtual private network (VPN) solution that will replace a mix of legacy hardware and software platforms. It will provide IRS offices and audit sites with connectivity to applications and resources stored in centralized IRS data centers.

Increasingly, IRS auditors work at least part of the time away from agency premises - from home or companies' sites, for example - where they currently may be unable to access the IRS network. ERAP will provide high-speed access to more than 50,000 of these remote and traveling IRS workers so they can securely access agency resources through a variety of transport methods such as cable and DSL.

"The IRS is one of the nation's largest civilian government agencies, and it deals with more Americans than any other institution, public or private," said Lou Addeo, president of AT&T Government Solutions. "Its employees handle incredibly sensitive financial information that touches virtually every American, so AT&T's ability to deliver a highly secure network integration solution was key to this win."

AT&T Corp.