Citizant Inc. will maintain and operate the National Housing Locator System (NHLS) for the Housing and Urban Development Department. The HUD task order will be worth as much as $1.9 million.

The work is an outgrowth of Citizant’s work with HUD that began in 2006. The company developed the housing system, a Web-based portal that allows federal, state and local agencies to find housing for people displaced by disaster. HUD undertook the effort after hurricanes Katrina and Rita made it obvious in 2005 that such a system was needed.

The system combines federal resources with commercial housing locators to offer a broad array of options to users of the system.

Under the new task order, the Chantilly, Va., company will continue its current operational and management services and enhance NHLS with new and expanded services that will include:

• Expanding customer service and case management applications.
• Establishing relationships with more than 4,000 public housing authorities to add their data to the system.
• Improving the interface with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to improve resource allocation.
• Enhancing the system’s Web service capabilities for better collaboration within HUD.