Oracle says a federal judge called the procurement “unlawful” — but that word doesn’t actually show up once in his 60-page ruling. And that isn’t Oracle’s only problem.

Overheated headlines to the contrary, the Defense Secretary is keeping all his options open on the controversial cloud computing contract.

The release of the full 60-page ruling provides new insights on how Judge Bruggink decided the case.

Judge Bruggink ruled on two key grounds — technical requirements and conflict of interest — but was silent on a third: whether the Pentagon’s plan to award the JEDI contract to a single vendor is fundamentally flawed.

At stake is not just a $10 billion IT contract, but an information age weapon.

WASHINGTON The massive and troubled $10 billion cloud contract the Pentagon has been pursuing has run into another snag. DoD revealed Tuesday it has obtained “new information” pointing to potential of conflicts of interest in the competition, already widely criticized for favoring Amazon Web Services. Pentagon spokesperson Elissa Smith confirmed to Breaking Defense that “new… Keep reading →

Two lawmakers don’t mention Amazon Web Services by name in their letter to the DoD IG, but the Web retailer is all over the complaint.

WASHINGTON: The JEDI cloud computing contract may be one of the most controversial deals the Pentagon hasn’t even awarded. Worth up to $10 billion over a decade, the Pentagon’s attempt to build its first true enterprise-wide cloud has sparked charges that the deal is designed to go straight to Amazon, which already supplies the CIA… Keep reading →

  I’ve been covering Pentagon acquisition policy for more than 15 years and this is a first for me. The Government Accountability Office offers below a critique of Bill Greenwalt’s sharp criticism of a recent GAO protest decision. For those of us who watch Pentagon procurement, most protests are obscure and boring. Then come ones… Keep reading →

Bill Greenwalt is sort of the Pied Piper of military acquisition policy. Where he leads, others often follow. After he wrote a series of op-eds for Breaking Defense recommending major changes to the Pentagon’s acquisition system, Sen. John McCain lured Bill back to his old job at the Senate Armed Services Committee. Greenwalt rewrote the laws, shaking up Defense Department acquisition. Bill is back, pointing to new acquisition problems, this latest one with his former employer — the Government Accountability Office. It’s a doozy, as you’ll see.