Amazon Versus Microsoft: JEDI in Play?

March 7, 2020

DarkCyber spotted a story in Stars and Stripes titled “Judge Says Amazon Likely to Succeed on Key Argument in Pentagon Cloud Lawsuit.” The source appears to be the Bezos-owned Washington Post. That fact may provide some context for the story.

The main point in the write up seems to be:

A federal judge has concluded that a bid protest lawsuit brought by Amazon over President Donald Trump’s intervention in an important Pentagon cloud computing contract “is likely to succeed on the merits” of one of its central arguments, according to a court document made public Friday [March 6, 2020].

The article states:

In an opinion explaining her reasoning, Campbell-Smith sided with Amazon’s contention that the Pentagon had made a mistake in how it evaluated prices for competing proposals from Amazon and Microsoft. She also concluded that the mistake is likely to materially harm Amazon, an important qualifier for government contract bid protests.

What’s missing from this story? Detail for one thing.

Several observations:

  1. Planners for the JEDI program are likely to experience uncertainty
  2. Regardless of the ultimate decision, time to implement newer systems is being lost
  3. The cost of the procurement process for JEDI will climb and, at some point, may become larger than the program itself.

Net net: Government procurement remains an interesting and impactful process. Procurement just keeps grinding its procedural mechanisms, delivering “efficiency.”

Stephen E Arnold, March 7, 2020

Comments

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