WASHINGTON – The ultra-secretive National Security Agency said Wednesday it planned to turn to the private sector for the overhaul of most of its "non-mission" technology in a single, 10-year contract valued at up to $5 billion.

The announcement marked a major milestone for an outfit whose Cold War research into code breaking and electronic eavesdropping helped spur the computer revolution and information warehousing.

In a statement, the NSA referred to the decision to pursue a government-industry partnership as a "dramatic change" in its approach to managing and upgrading its information technology underpinnings.

The move is "an effort to refocus agency assets on core functions that directly support" the spy mission of collecting and processing intercepted communications, the NSA said.

Despite its high-tech trailblazing, the NSA, an arm of the Defense Department, has made it clear it is struggling to keep up with the explosion of encrypted communications via fiber-optic cable, digital cellphones, and the Internet.

"In order to remain successful in our foreign signals intelligence and information assurance missions, we must immediately begin to invest in our (information technology) infrastructure to secure NSA's agility and adaptability in the Information Age," said the NSA's director, Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden.

"It is critical that we have a robust and reliable infrastructure capable of supporting our missions," he added.

The nod to the marketplace followed a 15-month study, dubbed Project Groundbreaker, that compared and contrasted private sector performance on information technology to in-house and other government staffing options, the NSA said.

In turning to the private sector for a technology fix, the NSA is taking a leaf from the Central Intelligence Agency, which announced in October the creation of a venture capital company to tap into high-tech firms to help solve information technology challenges.

The CIA tapped a Silicon Valley computer game whiz, Gilman Louie, to run its new venture capital firm – dubbed In-Q-It for the master gadgeteer, Q, from the James Bond novels and films.

Three private-sector consortiums led by major U.S. corporations have been assembled to bid on the NSA contract, according to the Washington Post, which carried the first report of the move in its Wednesday editions.

Names of the consortium members were not made public. The bids are due in late November and the contract is scheduled to be awarded next April, the Post said.

The NSA statement said the "managed competition" contract would cover four areas: distributed computing, enterprise/security management, networks, and "telephony."

Other information technology services will continue to be provided by government technicians with "re-engineered processes and performances metrics," the statement said, without elaboration.

The NSA, whose estimated 40,000 codebreakers, eavesdroppers, and other employees are headquartered at Fort Meade, Maryland, did not respond to written follow-up questions.

Once in place, the contract would eliminate the jobs of 1,200 to 1,500 NSA employees and an additional 800 contractors, the Post reported. But all NSA employees affected by the change would be be guaranteed jobs by the winning bidder, it said.