The Pentagon’s new chief information officer is replacing the Defense Digital Service as the lead for the department’s cloud computing efforts, the deputy secretary of defense said Monday.
DoD CIO Dana Deasy will now oversee the controversial multi-billion dollar Joint Enterprise Defense Initiative (JEDI) cloud project, which has yet to receive a final RFP and has received pushback from industry for its single-award contract structure.
“This initiative is part of a larger effort to modernize information technology across the DoD enterprise,” a DoD spokesperson said in a statement. “As the CIO, Deasy serves as the principal staff assistant and senior advisor to the secretary of defense and deputy secretary of defense for information technology Under Deasy’s leadership, the department will gradually consolidate its disparate networks, data centers and cloud efforts to manage them at the enterprise level.”
Deasy, who was sworn is as the department’s lead technology officer in May, will overee the JEDI cloud process, which missed its original May final RFP deadline and is slated for a September contract award.
Industry representatives have previously expressed concern that the single-award JEDI contract appears to be tailor made for a large company, such as Amazon Web Service [AMZN]. DoD officials have commented that the award will be determined through full, open competition.