CACI Ltd. to host ScotlandsPeople Website

In a news release dated 13 October 2015, the National Records of Scotland (NRS) has awarded CACI a contract for between £3m and £4m to provide a range of services, including web design, application development and hosting for the Scotland's People online service. The news release is entitled, "NRS picks CACI to help develop Scotland's People ancestry site."

Quoting from the press release:

NRS is a non-ministerial department of the Scottish government whose purpose is to collect, preserve and produce information about Scotland's people and history, making it available to inform present and future generations. The Scotland's People site is described as an important part of NRS' future strategy of improving customer and digital services. 

The Scotland's People service was established in 2002 and is the official government website offering access to Scottish family history research, which now hosts access to around 30m images and 110m index entries.

It took me a while to find out, but here is an explanation of CACI Ltd. from its website.

What does CACI stand for? 

The original name of the company was California Analysis Center, Inc. In 1967 the company was renamed Consolidated Analysis Centers, Inc. The company name was officially changed to CACI, Inc. in 1973. In recognition of our growing international business we became CACI International Inc.

The corporate headquarters of CACI International Inc. is in Arlington, Virginia. The company has over 16,700 employees worldwide. CACI is mainly a computer systems company. Again quoting from its website:

CACI provides information solutions and services in support of national security missions and government transformation for Intelligence, Defense, and Federal Civilian customers. A Fortune magazine World's Most Admired Company in the IT Services industry, CACI is a member of the Fortune 1000 Largest Companies, the Russell 2000 Index, and the S&P SmallCap 600 Index. CACI provides dynamic careers for over 16,700 employees in 120 offices worldwide.

 ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk is presently managed by the Findmypast.com (previously DC Thomson Family History) website. However, the press release indicates that the following:

As well as web design and application development, CACI will also provide services around search functionality, e-commerce, testing, secure web hosting, infrastructure, website management and expansion. It will replace an existing service provider whose contract expires on September 1, 2016.

The press release further states:

NRS holds the census records for all of Scotland and it has had responsibility for the gathering of census material since 1861. CACI previously worked with NRS services between 2008 and 2012 when it provided back office services for the 2011 Census. 

CACI is now working with NRS to design and develop the new service with the goal of having all testing phases completed and signed-off by the end of July 2016 in readiness for the new website service to go live next September.

 This change points out the fact that online genealogy is a business and the involvement of "genealogists" in the operation and maintenance of the large online database companies is not viewed as a necessary component. There is no mention of genealogy, as such, in any of the business descriptions or announcements.