Pentagon needs more time to re-award JEDI cloud contract

The Pentagon has asked for an additional 30 days to take corrective actions and make an award under the potential $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract.

The Department of Defense was due to issue a decision on its remand of the JEDI contract Aug. 17 but has asked to extend that to Sept. 16.

In March, after spending several months fighting a bid protest from Amazon, the DOD asked the court for 120 days to reconsider critical parts of its evaluation of the contract, which it awarded to Microsoft last October. At the conclusion of this period, the DOD will decide if the award to Microsoft was appropriate based on the corrective actions taken. It will then issue its decision to the court, reopening the protest’s proceedings, which have been put on pause during the remand.

Lawyers for the DOD said in a court filing Monday that the department “identified areas of concern” in the revised proposals from Microsoft and Amazon “resulting in multiple solicitation amendments, rounds of proposal revisions, and exchanges with the offerors” that have led it to need more time.

But, the “re-evaluation process will be complete by early September,” the DOD anticipates.

Both Amazon and Microsoft are OK with the additional time, DOD’s lawyers say.

Before this latest delay, DOD CIO Dana Deasy said in late July the department planned to re-award the JEDI contract by the end of August. For nearly three years now, the Pentagon has developed but yet to operationalize the enterprise commercial cloud program, largely because it’s been the center of constant bid protests and investigations. Deasy said last week the department’s biggest mistake with JEDI was letting the narrative around the contract get out of its control.