DOD acknowledges possible conflict of interest on JEDI procurement
The issue involves an individual who worked for both AWS and that Defense Digital Service.
In a court filing unsealed Feb. 22, the Department of Defense acknowledged it was investigating "possible conflicts of interest" involving former Amazon Web Services executive and Defense Digital Services employee Deap Ubhi with regard to the Pentagon's $10 billion cloud procurement.
Oracle is suing the DOD over the Joint Enterprise Defense Initiative procurement in part because of ties between DOD officials and AWS, which is widely seen as having an inside track on the contract.
The DOD sought and received a stay in the Oracle case last week. The stay gives time for a contracting officer who initially determined that Ubhi's participation in JEDI didn't violate DOD rules to reevaluate that assessment.
According to the filing, new information has come to light as of Feb. 12 that requires the reevaluation – although the precise nature of the information is redacted in the filing.
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