Department of Defense officials are planning to submit a report to Congress early next month justifying the department’s decision to structure its multi-billion dollar cloud migration project as a single-award contract.
Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis defended the Pentagon’s decision to eventually award the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) massive cloud contract to one company during a Thursday Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, saying it was the most effective way to get the capability to warfighters.
“The rush, right now, is that we have too many data banks that the frontline commanders cannot swiftly draw information from. That is the driving impetus. It’s the lethality.”
The contract has drawn questions from industry that the single-award nature of the large contract makes it designed for companies such as Amazon Web Services, which is part of Internet retail giant Amazon [AMZN].
The JEDI contract starts with a two-year single award contract, with potential eight one-year follow up options.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-Nev.) pressed Mattis on these concerns during the hearing.
“The department issued a [Request For Information] last month which received over a thousand questions and comments from industry and leading technology experts who, for the most part, believe that the current proposal is deeply misguided,” Heinrich said. “Yet, the department seems to be rushing ahead to issue a [Request For Proposals] in early May and intends to issue an award as early as September.”
Mattis responded that the contract is not sole-source and full, open competition will be maintained, but added that the contract structure is in place to ensure a company can handle getting this cloud capability integrated to the tactical edge.
“It is not a sole-source, and there’s no pre-select,” Mattis said. “Our goal is to get the best possible service for the frontline. I’m aware that some people in industry perhaps believe that this should be an equal opportunity thing where everybody gets a piece of the pie.”
DoD Comptroller David Norquist said that a justification report will be delivered to Congress on May 7 detailing the department’s decision to issue the contract as a single-award.
A final solicitation for JEDI is also expected to be released in early May.
“I think it deserves some oversight. We included language in the [omnibus spending bill] that requires you to submit a full justification for executing a single award, not sole-source contract, instead of a multi-cloud approach,” Heinrich said. “There are people speculating that this is tailor-made for a single vendor, and I would just ask you to assure me that those concerns are not justified.”