Contracting giant Accenture was awarded the $27.3 million contract to build the long-planned new data center for the Library of Congress.

The federal services arm of Accenture announced the three-year contract to build both a physical data center and other hosting environments, including cloud services.

The library’s current primary computing facility was built in the 1970s and Librarian of Congress Carla D. Hayden has told lawmakers that it and can no longer provide a sufficient level of data center reliability resiliency. The new data center was a key fiscal 2018 priority for the library. 

The Library of Congress has struggled with IT management and storage woes in the past. Two 2015 Government Accountability Office reports focused on management weakness, poor investment and strategic planning.  Hayden took charge in 2016 and had been working to achieve the recommendations made in the GAO reports. The library is set to release a new strategic plan in October. 

“We recognize this effort is pivotal in achieving the Library’s strategic goal of deploying ‘state-of-the-industry’ technology to expand and speed digital access to its vast collection of books and media. We have assembled the best of Accenture’s technology, data center and cloud professionals to rapidly make this vision a reality,” said Elaine Beeman, who leads Accenture Federal Services’ programs supporting federal civilian agencies in a statement.

The new data center will be vendor-agnostic, according to a release, and Accenture will lead the procurement and installation of all necessary hardware and software.