Amazon Web Services is challenging in the Court of Federal Claims the Government Accountability Office’s June bid protest decision overturning its win of a CIA cloud services contract worth up to $600 million over 4 years, with additional options.
In a redacted complaint unsealed Aug. 20, Amazon attorneys from the firm of Arnold & Porter argue that the GAO arrived at the wrong conclusions surrounding two points from a protest brought by IBM, which lost out to AWS on the CIA contract. Following the GAO’s decision, the CIA reopened discussions with offerors and called for new proposals due by Aug. 16; Amazon first filed its complaint on July 24.
In its decision, the GAO said IBM was correct that the CIA misevaluated a part of its pricing proposal. In its suit, AWS accuses IBM of “seeking to exploit a perceived ambiguity in the instructions” and the GAO of jettisoning established law to recharacterize IBM’s protest as a matter of price evaluation rather than the evaluation criteria.
Keep reading this article at: http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story/aws-disputes-gao-bid-protest-favoring-ibm-cia-cloud-computing-contract/2013-08-28
