March 7 -- The General Services Administration (GSA) announced that AT&T Business Services will be contracted with to run the FirstGov.gov search engine. FirstGov.gov is the U.S. government's central web portal -- providing a single point of entry to the U.S. government's online documents. A highly anticipated decision, some wondered whether the current provider, Inktomi, was at an unfair competitive advantage to receive the contract. (See this OMB Watch analysis of FirstGov's history) Instead, controversy arises from the fact that AT&T will use Fast Search and Transfer, a Norwegian company, to run the search engine. GSA has not provided the reasons why it chose AT&T, and the award notice gives very little information on the contract. U.S.-based companies that placed a bid for the contract are bashing GSA's decision to use foreign-based technology to run the U.S. government's premier website. For more information, see this article in Federal Computer Week.