Is a Trump review on tap for JEDI?
By
Nick Wakeman
President says "I’ve had very few things where there’s been such complaining" as the Pentagon's cloud acquisition has prompted.
Multiple outlets are reporting that President Donald Trump is hearing complaints about the Defense Department’s $10 billion JEDI cloud infrastructure contract and wants to take a closer look at the procurement.
Trump said there have been “tremendous complaints” about JEDI. He spoke with reporters Thursday during a meeting with Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte at the White House.
The complaints he has been hearing will sound familiar: The solicitation for JEDI favors Amazon Web Services. AWS and Microsoft are the only two companies left in the competition. IBM and Oracle were eliminated in an earlier downselect.
Oracle lost its lawsuit last week after a judge rejected its complaints about the fairness of the solicitation and its concerns about conflicts of interest.
“I’ve had very few things where there’s been such complaining,” Trump said, according to Bloomberg.
Trump said he has received complaints from “companies like Microsoft and Oracle and IBM. Great companies are complaining about it.”
Complaints also are coming from Capitol Hill where Senate Republicans have been writing letters to DOD and the White House asking questions about JEDI.
A JEDI award is expected this summer. Theoretically, Trump could cancel the contract, but that obviously would be a highly unusual move.
This piece first appeared on WashingtonTechnology.com.