A Modest Proposal

The Pentagon has a long history of “directed bids”, bids that are ostensibly opened but which only a single vendor can actually satisfy. In a post at RealClearPolicy Jerry Rogers observes that the Pentagon is doing it again, this time with a RFP that only Amazon can satisfy, and that the Congress is calling the DoD on it:

The content of the request for proposal and the appearance of cronyism raised red flags in Congress, which passed legislation to put the brakes on the process. It passed an appropriations bill that funds the Departments of Defense, Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services for the year, but only funds other parts of the government to December 7, 2018. This effectively punted some decisions to the Lame Duck session.

The defense portion of the bill, Section 8137, provided a funding rider that stopped the JEDI request for proposal for 90 days and required a transparent plan for cloud computing services procurement.

[…]

Congress, in other words, forced transparency on the multi-billion dollar contracting process in order to combat potential cronyism.

This is a classic case of Congress fighting federal bureaucrats in order to give the taxpayers some measure of confidence that this process will end up being fair and treat all contactors equally. Cronyism is still alive in Washington, D.C. and Congress has taken a strong step to address controversial lobbying efforts that allowed one of the biggest companies in human history to get an edge in contracting.

Three cheers to Congress for getting this one right and for addressing a scandal that had sidelined a number of the biggest American tech companies.

Here’s a modest proposal. I think the Pentagon should definitely get into a cloud but not the cloud. It should have its own private cloud, that cloud should only be interconnected with the public Internet at specific highly auditable and closely monitored points, and that vendors already in the web services business should be expressly disqualified from bidding.

There would still be plenty of qualified bidders. Just not the usual suspects. Sounds like one of the mass engineering projects I’ve been touting.

1 comment… add one
  • steve Link

    I would be more convinced they are serious about this if it had been a defense contractor this affected.

    Steve

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