DOD Cloud Program JWCC Pushed Back Until December

April 13, 2022

Turns out it takes longer to evaluate the options in the cloud than the DOD thought. Nextgov reveals, “Pentagon’s Effort to Supply Departmentwide Cloud Capabilities is Delayed, Again.” Reporters Lauren C. Williams and Brandi Vincent write:

“The Defense Department is delaying the award for its latest multibillion-dollar program to provide enterprise-wide commercial cloud services to the end of the year—which means certain solutions likely won’t be deployed until at least mid-2023. Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and Oracle were named by the Pentagon as contenders for the potentially massive $9 billion Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract in November and invited to submit proposals. But DOD Chief Information Officer John Sherman said ‘conducting the due diligence with four vendors’ is taking more time than previously anticipated and that is contributing to the shift from the original award scheduled for April 2022.”

At stake are four separate contracts worth up to $9 billion in total. Each will have a three-year base period with two one-year options. The Joint War fighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) will replace the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), which became bogged down by protest and litigation. The DOD’s Deputy CIO for Information Enterprise Danielle Metz tells us what has changed:

“What sets JWCC apart from the other current cloud service offerings that we have is that this is going to be a direct partnership with a cloud service provider. So, it’s going to enable us to be able to have commercial parity and to hold into account the cloud service providers from a cybersecurity perspective. We’ll be able to glean a lot and work closely with the cloud service providers, which will set the stage for our future acquisition activities.”

The article tells us this direction marks a purposeful shift for the DOD—focusing on multiple vendors and interoperability should speed up the entire contracting, acquisition, and funding process so personnel will get the capabilities they need faster. Sounds great in theory, but as this recent delay shows, that cloud stuff can be more complicated than it looks.

A bureaucracy bureaucratizes.

Cynthia Murrell, April 13, 2022

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Government, News

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.