Merit-Based and Competitive Awarding of Federal IT Services: Public Policy and Department of Defense Cloud Computing

On March 7, the Department of Defense (DoD) announced that it would award a single contract for its transformational Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud computing initiative. However, many in the defense industrial base have argued that a single award – as opposed to a multi-cloud solution – may limit DoD’s future ability to innovate, customize, and extract maximum value from data. This is one of many emerging questions regarding next-generation information technology (IT) services that have not been explored by policy makers.

With sponsorship from Oracle, Hudson Institute is convening an independent task force of leading technologists and policy experts to assess and make recommendations for maximizing innovation, performance, competition, transparency, security, and taxpayer value in this new era of cloud computing.

On April 12, in advance of the task force launch, Hudson Institute hosted a preliminary discussion to explore the significant public policy considerations that should be addressed in the JEDI procurement and the awarding of IT services by DoD and the U.S. government more broadly. Panelists included Hudson Senior Fellow William Schneider; former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence John Stenbit; and former Director of the Defense Technology Security Administration Stephen Bryen. These experts will offer thoughts on DoD’s adoption of cloud-based IT architecture and the factors that should guide the JEDI procurement.

A paper for discussion is available here