The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure procurement may be grounded until at least February, according to a new timeline agreed to by the government and Amazon Web Services.
On September 4, the Defense Department awarded Microsoft its Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud contract for a second time, concluding — amid a legal protest filed by Amazon Web Services—that Microsoft’s bid again represented “the best value to the government.”
Yet JEDI remains under a court-ordered injunction first issued in April, shelving any work under the contract until AWS’ protest is resolved. On Sept. 15, the Defense Department submitted—under seal—the source selection documentation it used to re-award the JEDI contract to Microsoft. The move formally concludes nearly five months of time that the Pentagon requested from Federal Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith to correct the JEDI procurement, and represents a significant step to potentially lifting the injunction.
“If there is an injunction imposed by the court, nothing can move forward,” Stan Soloway, president and CEO of Celero Strategies and a former Defense Department acquisition official, told Nextgov. “But, even if a protest is still in play, theoretically the government could declare an urgent need and proceed.”
Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2020/09/why-pentagons-jedi-saga-far-over/168516/
