conflict of interest | The Contracting Education Academy

January 8, 2020 By cs

Time to end Oracle’s long legal fight against JEDI cloud contract, government says

Government attorneys are telling a federal appeals court that it should rule against Oracle in its long-running legal challenge to the Pentagon’s JEDI Cloud contract — partly because some of Oracle’s legal claims are now beside the point.

Oracle is seeking to overturn a lower court ruling that found the Defense Department was on solid legal footing when it structured the multibillion dollar cloud contract. The company claims the Court of Federal Claims made “grave” errors in its ruling, including by brushing aside what Oracle alleges were serious conflicts of interest involving DoD employees and Amazon Web Services.

But in a response the government filed with the appellate court on Dec. 26, attorneys said any alleged improprieties surrounding AWS are now moot because of the Pentagon’s surprise decision in October to pick Microsoft, not Amazon, as the winner of the JEDI contract.

“Indeed, Oracle requested that AWS be eliminated from the JEDI competition, and DoD has effectively granted this relief, albeit for different reasons, by the award to Microsoft,” DoD and Justice Department attorneys wrote in their brief to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. “Accordingly, the court could not presently grant relief that would redress the alleged errors.”

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/defense-main/2020/01/time-to-end-oracles-long-legal-fight-against-jedi-cloud-contract-government-says/

November 18, 2019 By cs

The Pentagon’s climate problem

The defense acquisition community faces a climate problem — a political climate of suspicion is impeding the Pentagon’s efforts to take advantage of private industry expertise to deliver important capabilities to America’s warfighters.

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper called out the delegitimizing and debilitating nature of the climate of suspicion when, during his confirmation hearing, he observed: “I think the presumption is, for some reason, anybody who comes from the business or the corporate world is corrupt.” This phenomenon contributes to unnecessary delays to critical contract awards, discourages recruitment of leaders with industry experience, and deters strategic collaboration with industry partners.

Government faces a growing need for access to technologies at the frontier of innovation, requiring greater reliance on engagement with private sector innovators to deliver these tools. Although legitimate concerns about conflicts of interest should always receive fair hearing, when taken to extremes, they become detrimental to sound national security policy.

The controversy over the awarding of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, contract illustrates how the current climate of suspicion can undermine national defense programs. The JEDI cloud will act as a centralized cloud computing service for all of the Defense Department’s unclassified, classified and top-secret information. The contract will offer its eventual awardee revenue of up to $10 billion over 10 years. With such a lucrative deal up for grabs, the award process has become contentious, including allegations of bias in the award decision. Most prominently, Oracle Corp. filed a lawsuit against the department claiming that conflicts of interest by recently hired Pentagon procurement personnel previously employed by Amazon Web Services — the widely speculated favorite to win the JEDI contract award — prejudicially affected the procurement.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2019/11/5/the-pentagons-climate-problem

March 1, 2019 By AMK

Pentagon investigating whether Amazon employee tilted JEDI contract

The Defense Department will review whether a former employee—who now works at Amazon Web Services—improperly impacted the integrity of its $10 billion JEDI cloud contract.

The conflict of interest investigation comes approximately one month before the Pentagon was set to award the $10 billion contract—to host, analyze and process swaths of classified and sensitive military data—to one of four competing companies: AWS, Microsoft, IBM or Oracle.

In a partially redacted court filing released Friday in Oracle’s suit against the Defense Department, government lawyers explained their motion to stay—or delay—the case stemmed from “new information” regarding “possible conflicts of interest involving former DoD employee, Deap Ubhi.”

Ubhi worked in the Pentagon’s Defense Digital Service for almost two years in between jobs at Amazon Web Services.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2019/02/pentagon-investigating-whether-amazon-employee-tilted-jedi-contract/155118/

Government attorneys are telling a federal appeals court that it should rule against Oracle in its long-running legal challenge to the Pentagon’s JEDI Cloud contract — partly because some of Oracle’s legal claims are now beside the point.

The defense acquisition community faces a climate problem — a political climate of suspicion is impeding the Pentagon’s efforts to take advantage of private industry expertise to deliver important capabilities to America’s warfighters.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper has removed himself from decision-making on a cloud computing contract potentially worth $10 billion, citing his son’s employment with one of the original contract bidders.

The Defense Department Inspector General’s office sought to clear up confusion regarding its review of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract Tuesday, offering reporters a public statement days after Defense officials referenced the IG in statements to the press.

The Defense Department will review whether a former employee—who now works at Amazon Web Services—improperly impacted the integrity of its $10 billion JEDI cloud contract.

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