IBM | The Contracting Education Academy

March 3, 2021 By cs

Microsoft’s president calls for bid protest reforms

After years of pain over the legal battles related to the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud contract, Microsoft is calling on Congress to take a look at the protest process.

During a Tuesday Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on emerging technologies and national security, Microsoft President Brad Smith said it’s time to examine the protest process because it does not keep up with the speed of technological innovation. Smith’s remarks come as continuing legal troubles threaten to sink JEDI, which Microsoft was re-awarded in September.

“We all want to ensure fairness,” Smith said. “And that includes a fair right to be heard. But we could definitely benefit from an accelerated timeline to do so.”

The Defense Department conceived the $10 billion JEDI concept around four years ago, but implementation has been held back because of multiple legal challenges from Oracle, IBM and Amazon Web Services throughout the procurement. Oracle recently filed a petition with the Supreme Court for a review of a decision on its own pre-award JEDI protest.

As it stands, a decision from a federal judge on a motion filed by Microsoft and DoD on portions of AWS’s protest alleging improper political influence in the award process by administration officials is pending.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2021/02/microsoft-president-calls-bid-protest-reforms/172248/

Also see: https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2021/02/should-pentagon-reform-its-bid-protest-rules/172260/

March 4, 2019 By AMK

IBM to support operation, migration on 2 GSA contract data systems

IBM will operate and maintain two online contracting data repositories under the purview of the General Services Administration (GSA) as part of a $24.5M contract from the agency.

GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service said in a FedBizOpps notice posted last Wednesday that IBM will help manage the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) and the System for Award Management (SAM) as well as migrate data and functionality to an updated version of the SAM system.

Source: https://www.govconwire.com/2019/02/ibm-to-support-operation-migration-on-two-gsa-contracting-data-systems/

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/

August 31, 2018 By AMK

GSA mulls recompete of SAM.gov contract

The General Services Administration granted IBM a six-month $16 million extension on its contract to operate and modernize the SAM.gov system as the agency considers whether to put the business up for bidding.

The extension was announced in a contracting document dated Aug. 13 that cited an urgent need to keep IBM on the job while the agency explores the possibility of a competitive offering.

IBM has held the System for Award Management Architecture and Operations Contract Services contract for eight years, and it is leading the effort to modernize the system of systems that government agencies and vendors use to manage hundreds of billions in government contracts annually.

IBM’s contract expired Aug. 14. GSA had intended to award IBM another long-term deal, but according to contracting documents, that move was overturned because of a ruling that more market research needs to be conducted to support a decision to justify a sole source award.

Keep reading this article at: https://fcw.com/articles/2018/08/23/gsa-sam-recompete.aspx

March 30, 2016 By AMK

Pentagon’s procurement system is so broken they are calling on Watson

IBM’s Watson, the computational genius that has bested Jeopardy champions, published a cookbook and even been unleashed in the fight against cancer, now has what is perhaps its greatest challenge — taking on the morass of federal procurement process.

For years, government agencies have tried to find ways to make the purchasing process more efficient. But now the Air Force has come to the conclusion that humans cannot on their own manage the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), 1,897 pages of the densest prose on the planet. The only way to navigate a stifling bureaucracy that virtually everyone agrees it is broken, is to turn to the power of the machine.

The Air Force is currently working with two vendors, both of which have chosen Watson, IBM’s cognitive learning computer, to develop programs that would harness artificial intelligence to help businesses and government acquisitions officials work through the mind-numbing system.

The idea is to create a “bureaucracy buster, or let’s call it a decoder,” said Camron Gorguinpour, a senior official in the Air Force’s acquisitions office.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/the-pentagons-procurement-system-is-so-broken-they-are-calling-on-watson/2016/03/18/a6891158-ec6a-11e5-a6f3-21ccdbc5f74e_story.html

After years of pain over the legal battles related to the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud contract, Microsoft is calling on Congress to take a look at the protest process.

IBM will operate and maintain two online contracting data repositories under the purview of the General Services Administration (GSA) as part of a $24.5M contract from the agency.

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 General Services Administration granted IBM a six-month $16 million extension on its contract to operate and modernize the SAM.gov system as the agency considers whether to put the business up for bidding.

IBM’s Watson, the computational genius that has bested Jeopardy champions, published a cookbook and even been unleashed in the fight against cancer, now has what is perhaps its greatest challenge — taking on the morass of federal procurement process.

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