Roger Waldron, president of the Coalition for Government Procurement, discusses the halt in the controversial JEDI acquisition process, and how the CIO’s investigation into it will proceed.
The Department of Defense’s Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy ordered a full review of the JEDI cloud procurement process. The acquisition spurred debate for several months. Some contractors worried that the “single source contract” meant that only the biggest cloud providers could compete. Deasy said that pausing the JEDI acquisition was a top priority when he started the position in May. “It fundamentally gets down to requirements, requirements, requirements. That’s to me where the CIO and his shop should start. Taking a look at the JEDI procurement and review the requirements. You’ve got the services, they all have somewhat unique missions…They have to be able to talk to each other. There has got to be redundancy and reviewing the requirements, taking a look at the RFP, especially looking at the questions asked by industry. There are lots and lots, over 1,000 questions asked. Quite frankly, some of the answers left a little to be desired,” said Roger Waldron, president of the Coalition for Government Procurement. “There’s been a commitment to transparency with industry and Congress and that’s a positive statement on the part of the CIO. Reviewing those questions and taking a look where there could be more information provided to the industry to ensure a full and open competition would be great.”
