The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) awarded a $66 million contract to Fredericksburg-based information technology company IST Research LLC to perform large-scale data collection.

The funding comes from the GSA’s Phase III SBIR (Small Business Innovative Research) contract and will run through June 2025. IST Research will support information collection operations for the federal government. The company will use its Pulse Platform to provide monitoring and engagement of international organizations, including the U.S. Special Operations Command Africa (SOCAFRICA).

“The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the need for methodologies IST Research employs around monitoring and engagement,” according to IST Research. “This technology is even more critical — and efficient — in light of the current dangers of and restrictions around air travel and face-to-face encounters.”

IST Research offers data collection, cloud data processing and data analysis to inform its customers. Pulse combines social listening and content discovery across the surface, deep and dark webs and has been used for security, humanitarian assistance, research, marketing and risk management purposes.

“Right now it’s more critical than ever for organizations to continue engaging vulnerable populations in order to ferret out bad actors looking to take advantage of this worldwide crisis,” IST Research CEO Ryan Paterson said in a statement. “Our ‘technology + technique’ approaches are remote, scalable, cost-efficient, sensitive to the realities of vulnerable populations — and more accurate than methods used previously.”

IST Research, an Inc. 5000 company from 2016 through 2018, was founded in 2008.

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