CAGW Leads Coalition Letter to OMB on JEDI Contract
Letters to Officials
May 16, 2019
The Honorable Russell Vought, Acting Director
Office of Management and Budget
725 17th Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20503
Dear Acting Director Vought,
The undersigned organizations, representing millions of members and supporters across the country, write to voice our strong concerns over the $10 billion sole source Joint Enterprise Defense Initiative (JEDI) cloud services project, for which the Department of Defense (DOD) is currently reviewing requests for proposals under Solicitation No. HQ0034-18-R-0077.
From its inception, the JEDI proposal has been problematic. It contains several “gating” criteria that have severely restricted the number of potential providers and could in fact be written in a manner that predetermines an award to one contractor that currently meets the Defense Information Systems Agency Impact Level 6. We are also highly concerned about the security impact of consolidating the services requested in the proposal to one unified platform, rather than using multiple cloud services.
A contract of this magnitude should not be awarded as a sole source contract. In November 2017, IT Alliance for Public Sector’s Senior Vice President Trey Hodgkins informed DOD that its cloud should consist of “multiple interoperable offerings” to provide competition and the “best value for both the warfighter and taxpayer.” The use of multiple cloud solutions follows industry-wide best practices utilized by most Fortune 500 companies. Mr. Hodgkins noted that by using multiple providers, the cybersecurity and functionality of the JEDI system would be improved, costs would decrease through increased competition, and flexibility to quickly adapt to new technologies would increase.
The individual services have made it clear they are not in favor of a single vendor to transition their information technology systems to the cloud. When the RFP was announced, Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Lt. General VeraLinn “Dash” Jamieson said she does not want the Air Force to use one cloud provider, since “’multi-cloud’ will give the enemy ‘a targeting problem.’” In September 2018, the Navy issued a multi-cloud, multi-vendor award to CSRA, a General Dynamics Information Technology Company, which will “act as the commercial cloud broker for the Navy.” The award could reach up to $95 million by the time the transition is completed. Other cloud migration projects being undertaken by the individual services include the Army’s Accent contract and the Air Force’s managed services office. Both of those will also be multi-cloud, multi-vendor deals.
The sole source single award procurement process for the JEDI cloud services project should be abandoned and revised to allow for multiple vendors. We also urge the Office of Management and Budget to take steps to ensure that all future cloud services procurements by government agencies follow industry best practices by using multiple awards as the preferred solution for cloud services.
Sincerely,
Thomas A. Schatz, President, Citizens Against Government Waste
Daniel Schneider, Executive Director, American Conservative Union
Andrew Langer, President, Institute for Liberty
Seton Motley, President, Less Government
David Williams, President, Taxpayers Protection Alliance