GAO to decide WildandStormy bid protest outcome by Oct. 29
The Government Accountability Office will decide the outcome of a bid protest filed by Microsoft over a billion-dollar cloud procurement involving the National Security Agency by Oct. 29.
A GAO spokesperson confirmed to FedScoop that the agency had received a complaint from the tech giant, and outlined a timeline for the bid protest process.
Under procurement rules, GAO will issue an initial report in response by Aug. 20, and Microsoft will have 10 days to respond.
The dispute is understood to relate to a $10 billion cloud contract, which according to sources was awarded to Amazon. It is known in the federal IT community as WildandStormy.
“NSA recently awarded a contract for cloud computing services to support the Agency. The unsuccessful offeror has filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO),” a spokesperson for the NSA told FedScoop. “The Agency will respond to the protest in accordance with appropriate federal regulations.”
Details of the bid protest were first reported by Washington Technology.
A spokesperson for Microsoft confirmed the protest, saying: “Based on the [award] decision we are filing an administrative protest via the Government Accountability Office. We are exercising our legal rights and will do so carefully and responsibly.”
News of the bid protest comes after the Department of Defense last month announced that its Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract would be scrapped, following a nearly two-year legal dispute waged by Amazon protesting the contract’s award to Microsoft. It has been replaced with the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability acquisition, which the department intends to issue as a multi-cloud, multi-award contract.
