The work supports TSA and DHS employees in various locations, including headquarters, airports and federal security director offices, field offices and the TSA Command Operation Center, the agencies said.

The contract calls for one base year of services, costing the TSA $265 million and DHS $43 million for a total of $308 million. Two one-year options are available, with the full three-year contract price not to exceed $750 million.

Baroni said that when the TSA was created, the original Unisys contract was designed to create basic IT systems for use by the agency's workers to help protect the nation's transportation systems. The next step is to provide enhancements and optimization of those original services and systems to further assist the agencies in their work, he said.

When Unisys and its partners, including IBM and Dell Computer Co., began work under the original contract, all of the vendors stepped up with their best practices to help set up new systems, Baroni said. "It was a very important period of history," he said. "Everyone stepped in and put self-interests aside to work in the interests of the nation" after the terrorist attacks.

The new TSA went "from zero to 60,000 workers in one year," he said. "Our job was to make sure they weren't just standing around. We had to put the infrastructure out there to support them."