GMR wins contract to handle nation's report card online

Government Micro Resources Inc. has won a five-year, $9.65 million Department of Education contract to develop advanced Web systems for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the company announced Sept. 17.

NAEP is better known as the nation's report card. It is the primary and longest-running nationwide assessment of what students know and can do in subject areas including math, science, reading and history.

The NAEP contract involves an alliance of prime contractors to the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics. Other prime contract awards were made to Westat Inc. of Rockville, Md., American Institutes for Research of the District of Columbia, NCS Pearson Inc. of Bloomington, Minn., and the NAEP alliance lead Educational Testing Service of Princeton, N.J., according to GMR.

Stephen Lazer, NAEP director for Educational Testing Service, said GMR's technical experience will be instrumental in providing applications and technical support to team partners and government staff working on NAEP, and will help ensure the security and continuous operation of Web communications.

GMR, an information technology provider in Manassas, Va., will serve as the prime contractor developing leading-edge Web applications, deploying online training systems and introducing collaboration technologies to support the thousands of people in government and the private sector who work with NAEP. GMR will work with the NAEP Web site staff to publish test results promptly and help develop new tools for communicating test data to the public online, the company said.

GMR will develop applications using .Net, XML and variety of advanced commercial-off-the-shelf collaboration and e-learning applications, said Peter Lazar, vice president of GMR's Business Solutions unit, which will oversee the work.