The San Diego County Board of Supervisors has awarded Northrop Grumman Corporation a contract to manage the county's information technology and telecommunications services, reducing costs and improving the county's use of technology to increase services to its citizens. The contract is valued in excess of $650 million over seven years to Northrop Grumman's Information Technology (IT) sector. The county also has an option to extend the contract by five years. As part of the contract, Northrop Grumman will administer San Diego County's information technology and telecommunications services, including data center, help desk, desktop, network, applications and cross-functional services. "The County of San Diego is already viewed as a technology leader," said Hugh Taylor, president of Northrop Grumman IT's Commercial, State and Local Group. "Through this partnership, we look forward to helping San Diego County introduce new and enhanced technologies to better serve its citizens." Northrop Grumman's key subcontractors on the contract include BearingPoint, McLean, Va., EDS, Plano, and SBC/AT&T, San Antonio, Texas. San Diego County is the nation's fourth most populous county. It has almost 17,000 employees and an annual operating budget of more than $4 billion. In 2004, the Center for Digital Government and the National Association of Counties named the county as one of the top cutting edge governments in the nation. Northrop Grumman Information Technology, headquartered in McLean, Va., is a trusted IT leader and premier provider of advanced IT solutions, engineering and business services for government and commercial clients. The company's technological leadership spans such areas as homeland security solutions, health IT solutions, secure wireless, cyber and physical assurance, IT and network infrastructure, managed services, knowledge management, modeling and simulation, and geospatial intelligence solutions.