The Defense Department has sent a letter to Congress to explain its decision to pursue a single-award contract for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud procurement program instead of a multiple-award contract, Fedscoop reported Monday.
Adopting a multiple-award contract for the JEDI cloud program “could prevent DoD from rapidly delivering new capabilities and improved effectiveness to the warfighter that enterprise-level cloud computing can enable†and could lead to “additional costs and technical complexity†on the Pentagon, John Gibson, DoD chief management officer, wrote in the letter obtained by FedScoop.
Gibson noted that DoD intends to implement multiple measures to address issues related to the vendor lock-in arrangement and limit the base term to two years.
Nextgov also reported that DoD aims for the JEDI cloud platform to host nuclear weapon design data and other classified information.
The department would require the winning contractor to secure the Energy Department’s “Q†and “L†clearances that seek to facilitate access to restricted nuclear information and other top-secret security clearances, according to new contracting documents.
Heather Babb, a spokeswoman for DoD, told Nextgov that the department intends for cloud services under the procurement program to be “offered at all classification levels†and would provide defense and military clients leeway to identify data and applications they want to move to the cloud.
