Leonel Garciga, the U.S. Army’s chief information officer and a two-time Wash100 awardee, has signed and issued a memorandum providing updated guidance on the procurement of cloud service offerings, or CSOs, across the military branch.
The June 30 memo was posted on the Army Publishing Directorate’s website on Wednesday.
Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability Vehicle for Cloud Procurements
Effective immediately, the memo mandates the use of the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability, or JWCC, contract vehicle to purchase all new CSOs across Department of the Army headquarters; Army commands; Army service component commands; direct reporting units; and field operating agencies.
Garciga noted that the policy only applies to unclassified and secret-level cloud computing services and capabilities.
In December 2022, the Department of Defense awarded four vendors positions on the potential $9 billion JWCC contract. The procurement vehicle seeks to provide military personnel with enterprisewide cloud offerings spanning all security domains and classification levels.
ECMA to Manage CSO Procurements Through JWCC
The directive designates the Army Enterprise Cloud Management Agency, or ECMA, as the “central authority” to broker and oversee CSO acquisitions through the JWCC contract to ensure compliance with Army reporting, governance and tracking requirements.
The memo directs existing CSO procurements funded through other means to coordinate with ECMA to create transition plans to align with the contract vehicle.
To reflect the new policy, ECMA will work with the deputy assistant secretary of the Army for procurement to update Army guidance and the Army Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement.
According to the document, the service branch will continue to manage cloud procurements through the Army Military Intelligence Cloud Computing Service Provider to meet the cloud requirements of intelligence community components.
