David Norquist, comptroller at the Defense Department, said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday that DoD intends to provide lawmakers with a justification report about its plan to acquire cloud computing infrastructure through a single-award contract, C4ISRNET reported Thursday.
Norquist informed the panel that the department will submit a report to explain its Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure acquisition method to Congress by May 7.
DoD is scheduled to issue a final request for proposals on the potential $10 billion JEDI cloud contract next month.
Defense Secretary James Mattis, a 2018 Wash100 recipient, defended the Pentagon’s cloud procurement strategy during the SASC hearing.
“What we’ve been looking at now is how do we get faster access to young folks on the front lines, displaying the information they need, not all the information in the world,” Mattis told committee members.
“That’s the driving impetus – it’s the lethality.â€