Pentagon Extends JEDI Proposal Deadline

The Pentagon pushed back the deadline to accept bids on its $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract to Oct. 9 following another amendment to the procurement issued Aug. 31.

In an updated FedBizOpps posting, the Pentagon attributed the extension—from Sept. 17 to Oct. 9—to the “content of the amendments and offeror requests,” in an effort to give companies a chance to incorporate any changes in the procurement to their technical bids.

The JEDI procurement’s second amendment includes 59 additional questions from industry following a first change in the procurement Aug. 23, which itself contained answers to more than 200 questions from industry and cloud service providers interested in bidding on the contract.

JEDI was opened for bids in late July. It will put a single cloud service provider in charge of hosting and distributing mission-critical workloads and classified military secrets to warfighters around the globe. It also became a source of controversy among industry titans. Companies have battled publicly and behind the scenes both over the contract and its intent to award a single cloud service provider—not multiple companies—the Defense Department’s business.

JEDI is also facing a legal challenge. On Aug. 6, Oracle filed a pre-award bid protest with the Government Accountability Office. The company, widely seen as one of four or five companies that will compete for JEDI, modified its protest on Aug. 23, the same day the Pentagon amended the JEDI procurement for the first time.