Amazon Web Services argued in a redacted court filing Oct. 23 that a judge should invalidate the Defense Department’s award of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract to Microsoft over “systematic bias, bad faith and undue influence exerted by President Trump.”
The filing, unsealed in the Court of Federal Claims Tuesday, represents the next legal step in the yearlong battle for the contract, which Microsoft first won in October 2019 and AWS subsequently protested. The Pentagon awarded the contract to Microsoft again in September after addressing address errors identified by AWS in its evaluation, but AWS’ unsealed complaint argues its efforts didn’t go far enough.
“After the Court rejected the flawed initial JEDI evaluation, the DoD spent over four months attempting to revive Microsoft’s non-compliant bid and reaffirm that flawed and politically-biased decision,” an AWS spokesperson told Nextgov. “As a result of the DoD fixing just one of many errors, the pricing differential swung substantially, with AWS now the lowest-priced bid by tens of millions of dollars. The fact that correcting just one error can move the needle that substantially demonstrates why it’s important that the DoD fix all of the evaluation errors that remain unaddressed, and ensure they are getting access to the best technology at the best price.”
The contract, which would put a commercial company in charge of global war cloud and swaths of secret and top secret data, could be worth up to $10 billion over the next decade. However, it was conceived nearly four years ago and has yet to get off the ground, having ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
