Technology consulting firm Accenture has landed a five-year, US$13m contract with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to redesign and improve the architecture of public websites, online tools used most frequently by the public, and the agency’s employee intranet.
Accenture Federal Services will carry out the contract and its work will support initiatives at SEC to enhance its technology infrastructure.
Work on SEC.gov will include a redesign, content management, web search engine optimisation, user analytics and site security.
Improvements and upgrades will be made to Investor.gov, which helps investors conduct background checks on investment professionals and companies, understand key financial documents, and learn to identify fraudulent offers.
Improvements also will be made to the SEC’s employee intranet, which is used by more than 3,800 internal users on the SEC network.
Accenture Federal Services has also been tasked with creating a new search tool with advanced options to make it easier for investors to find specific disclosure documents out of 21m of them via the SEC’s Electronic Data Gathering and Retrieval (EDGAR) system.
Combined, the SEC portals receive more than 35m visits a day and average 450m visits per month.
“The SEC strategy has been to leverage its resources wisely to create the greatest operational efficiencies and reduce life-cycle costs,” said Ed Meehan, who leads Accenture’s federal civilian agency portfolio.
“The redesign and enhancements to SEC.gov and its other portals will create a more robust and integrated system that is safe and secure, yet flexible to support evolving content,” Meehan said.