Arizona is close to hiring a company that will maintain the state’s Web site for information and services. For six years this service was supplied by IBM, but has now been awarded to the Kansas-based company, NICUSA. The three-year contract with NICUSA is worth nearly $5.8 million in services, with the option for three one-year extensions at approximately $2 million per year. Arizona has not signed a contract yet, but the state has “awarded” it to them. The two parties still need to have negotiations to finalize the deal, which, NICUSA Director of Investor Relations and Communications, David Oboyski said, “could take two to three weeks or as long as two to three months.” If the contract is signed NICUSA will begin the transition in October. “We build a Web site that makes everything available to different users of state government,” Oboyski said. “There are 21 states in the U.S. that currently outsource the development of their Web portal and online services and NICUSA does 19 of them.” If Arizona finalizes the deal, NICUSA’s tally will be 20 of 21 states. Two other providers, IBM and Verizon, were in the running, but after the State Procurement Office completed its evaluation, NICUSA’s bid was considered the best. “Based on the evaluation factors outlined in the (Request for Proposal) RFP, the evaluation committee determined that the NICUSA proposal presented the best value for the state,” Public Information Officer for the Arizona Department of Administration, Alan Ecker said in an e-mail. The state Web portal, www.az.gov or AZ@Your Service, is the point of access to a broad range of services in Arizona. The Web site features links — from employment opportunities to the government directory. The evaluation committee determined that NICUSA’s proposal contains the following strengths: its staff will be located in Phoenix, the company provided a detailed transition plan, it demonstrated significant experience and success providing similar services to other governments and submitted competitive pricing and it submitted competitive pricing, Ecker said. Oboyski said that NICUSA provides quality services for the states that hire them because their objectives are the same. “It perfectly aligns a state’s incentives with our incentives,” he said. “If we don’t make a user friendly site that generates good transactions and good use of service, we don’t look good. And if we don’t look good, neither does the state.”