A $4.9 million contract to take incoming calls on behalf of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission could be a sign of more to come for a sprawling call center operation at the East Hills Business Park.

Pearson Government Solutions in March officially launched its new National Contact Center on behalf of the commission, which handles work place discrimination complaints nationwide.

The new center is one of 30 projects run out of the Pearson’s Lawrence complex, where 1,800 full-time-equivalent employees now work, up from 16 when the company came to town a little more than a decade ago.

“We always anticipate growing, but it depends on how well we deliver the goods,” said Mark Andrews, the site and human resources manager for Pearson, 3833 Greenway Drive. “We have a very aggressive business development plan, and we’re always competing for these types of things.

“This is the first time EEOC has done this. They have all the knowledge, and they are relying on Pearson to deliver that knowledge across the country. It’s two groups that are on top of their games.”

The new center at East Hills is operated by 36 customer service representatives, who answer calls to the commission’s nationwide toll-free number, (800) 669-4000. The program is designed to provide prompt, consistent and expert service for callers from among the country’s 140 million workers.

The commission typically gets more than 1 million calls a year through its network of field offices, where mediators, investigators, litigators and administrative judges often find themselves answering questions from business managers looking for anti-discrimination posters or workers looking for unemployment checks.

Only about 40 percent of calls to field offices involve potential complaints about work place discrimination, officials said, and information from those callers now can be relayed to the field offices by the trained staffers at the Pearson call center.

Cari Dominguez, the commission’s chairwoman, visited the Lawrence center March 21 and personally greeted all 36 call-takers on the job. She listened in as Jeff Wisniewski, one of the center’s employees, took a call from a woman in California who sought information about filing a discrimination complaint.

“This is a huge day for us,” Dominguez said, after dropping by the work stations. “It’s taking the services the commission provides to a much higher level than it’s ever been before.”

The commission had estimated that it would cost up to $5.2 million a year just to hire enough call-takers to properly staff its field offices, she said. Opting to hire Pearson followed up on President Bush’s directive to all federal offices to become more “customer-centric” and “results-oriented” in providing federal services.

Dominguez said she would expect Pearson’s operations in Lawrence – already home to federal call centers for Medicare, immigration services and other agencies – to land even more government work in the years ahead, provided the two-year project succeeds as expected.

“At the end of this pilot,” she said, “we’ll be able to assess (the program): Has it produced the results intended? Are we really providing the service -the quality service that we need? And I think, if the answer to that is yes, then we’ll see other opportunities that the government can provide to places like Lawrence.”