The Trusted Internet Connection initiative (also known as TIC, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Memorandum M-08-05) is mandated in an OMB Memorandum issued in November 2007. The memorandum was meant to optimize individual external connections, including internet points of presence currently in use by the Federal government of the United States

Federal government of the United States

The federal government of the United States is the national government of the constitutional republic of fifty states that is the United States of America. The federal government comprises three distinct branches of government: a legislative, an executive and a judiciary. These branches and...

. It includes a program for improving the federal government’s incident response capability through a centralized gateway monitoring at a select group of TIC Access Providers (TICAP).. By reducing the number of access points, the government could more easily monitor and identify potentially malicious traffic.

The initial goal for total number of federal external connections and internet points of presence was 50. General Services Administration

General Services Administration

The General Services Administration is an independent agency of the United States government, established in 1949 to help manage and support the basic functioning of federal agencies. The GSA supplies products and communications for U.S...

 Networx

Networx

The GSA Networx is the largest set of government contracts for civilian telecommunication to date in the United States. It consists of two contract vehicles - Networx Universal and Networx Enterprise. Multiple awards for each contract are made to contractors chosen under full and open competition...

is the contract vehicle to implement this initiative.