Oracle appeals decision on $10B Pentagon contract

Oracle Corp. on Tuesday filed an appeal to a federal claims court ruling that found the cloud-computing company does not have standing to contest a $10 billion Department of Defense (DOD) contract that will likely go to either Amazon or Microsoft.

The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract has been the subject of intense lobbying efforts in Washington by Oracle, Amazon and Microsoft, and many Republicans have alleged that the bidding war was biased in favor of Amazon from the start.

Oracle sued, arguing that the Pentagon crafted the contract specifically with Amazon in mind and that the process was rife with conflicts of interest.{mosads}

But last month a judge on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims said Oracle could not “demonstrate prejudice” against itself. 

Dorian Daley, the general counsel for Oracle, released a statement on Tuesday announcing that the company would challenge that ruling.

“The Court of Federal Claims opinion in the JEDI bid protest describes the JEDI procurement as unlawful, notwithstanding dismissal of the protest solely on the legal technicality of Oracle’s purported lack of standing,” Daley said.

“Federal procurement laws specifically bar single award procurements such as JEDI absent satisfying specific, mandatory requirements, and the Court in its opinion clearly found DOD did not satisfy these requirements,” Daley continued, pointing out that the opinion found the procurement “suffers from many significant conflicts of interest.”

“These conflicts violate the law and undermine the public trust. As a threshold matter, we believe that the determination of no standing is wrong as a matter of law, and the very analysis in the opinion compels a determination that the procurement was unlawful on several grounds.”

The Pentagon’s inspector general is reviewing the JEDI program’s procurement process after top Republicans raised concerns about potential misconduct and alleged collusion between Amazon lobbyists and Defense Department officials.

New Defense Secretary Mark Esper also ordered an internal review shortly after President Trump publicly questioned the contract.

The 10-year JEDI contract is worth up to $10 billion and would allow one company to develop cloud-computing infrastructure for the Pentagon.