DoD Inspector General Issues Report on Pentagon's JEDI Contract Award Process

The Department of Defense’s office of inspector general concluded that the awarding of the potential 10-year, $10B Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud computing contract to Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) was consistent with federal acquisition laws and policies, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

The DoD IG’s office interviewed 25 witnesses related to the source-selection process to investigate claims that the White House improperly influenced the JEDI procurement process and concluded that evidence suggests that there was no pressure from the administration with regard to the contract award.

“The evidence we received showed that the DoD personnel who evaluated the contract proposals and awarded Microsoft the JEDI Cloud contract were not pressured regarding their decision on the award of the contract by any DoD leaders more senior to them, who may have communicated with the White House,” the IG’s office said in the report dated Monday.

The report states that the IG office could not fully review allegations of White House influence after the administration asserted a “presidential communications privilege” that precluded some senior DoD officials from directly responding to the IG office’s questions.

The Pentagon said the IG report validates DoD’s JEDI contract award decision. “The Inspector’s General final report on the JEDI Cloud procurement confirms that the Department of Defense conducted the JEDI Cloud procurement process fairly and in accordance with law,” DoD said in a statement published Wednesday.

Microsoft said the document “makes clear the DoD established a proper procurement process.”

Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) asked the court in late March to deny DoD’s request for the 120-day remand to re-evaluate its decision on the cloud contract.

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