STEIN A. WOMACK Ccemmrrree ON Tae BUDGET Congress of the Cited States — | Swemwrwrowoere Worse of Representatives Neette fess Aete ‘Washington, DE 20515-0403 June 12, 2019 ‘President Donald !. Tramp ‘The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Washington, D.C. 20500 Dear President Tramp, I write today with concem over the Department of Defense's plan to procure a major cloud ‘computing system through a program called Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure JEDI). The JEDI program could potentially bea ten-year, $10 billion contact that will be awarded to one single cloud service provider (CSP). Despite this already-limiting contract structure, American SPs Oracle and IBM were recently eliminated from consideration based on what I believe to be arbitrary reasons to limit competition. JEDI originally had interest from two hundred companies, ‘Which would have ensured tremendous pricing competition, but the inital criteria set fr bidding limited the competion to four companies, and now, less than three months away from the contract award, the Pentagon has down selected the competition to only two companies. Ido not understand the Peatagon’s insistence on limiting competition. ‘You have commited to rebuilding our military and we are now spending record sums for our defense. As a Member of Congress my most important constitutional duty isto, “Provide forthe common defense.” At the same time, Ihave a strong responsibility to ensure we are spending. every taxpayer dolar effectively. To that end, you renegotiated the contract forthe new Air Force One to save more than a billion dollars. Buying cloud computing technology forthe Pentagon should te treated no differently, we need to strive forthe most capable, most cost- effective systems. ‘The JEDI program has the potential to waste hundreds of millions of dollars on techno ogy that ‘may not be the latest and most secure. Even more so than standard weapons systems the Pentagon will bensfit from competition between CSPs. The scalable nature of cloud computing ‘makes competition essential, without competition a vendor will not have any reason to include the latest, most capable, and most secure technology. Beyond the uncompetitive nature of the contract structure, the bidding criteria arbitrarily limited ‘competition for no good reason. One of the main criteria used to eliminate Oracle and IBM from, the final competition was the requirement that, “The addition of DoD unclassified usage will not represent a majority ofall unclassified usage,” forthe vendor. The Pentagon determined a‘vendor's overall usage sing the average two month usage from over a year ago. This il- ‘conceived requirement only serves to artificially limit com “The House Appropriations Committe, of which lam a member, has requested various reports, from the Department on how the JEDI program will sustain competition and preclude vendor lock these responses have been completely unsatisfactory. From the beginning, Congress has “expressed our concems, that contraty to industry best practices, the Department has decided to use a single vendor forthe JEDI programm. This choice will limit competition, degrade capability, and produce a less-secure cloud environment, Your Administration has promoted a Cloud Smart strategy for federal departments to obtain cloud services from multiple providers, and that isthe industry standard in the private sector. Yet despite all ofthis, the Pentagon has continued to ‘move forward with JEDI because in the words of the staff member leading JEDI, it was beter to, “double down.” 1 do not want to see one dollar wasted and I do not want our military to be deprived of the best technology available. Unfortunately, in its current state, the JEDI program would do just that. believe that our warfighters deserve the best capability possible and thatthe taxpayers deserve the best value possible, and I respectfully request your personal attention on this matter. Thank you for your dedication tothe men and women that voluntarily step forward to defend our nation ‘and our values, Sincerely, Cea Steve Womack Member of Congress ‘Ce: Vice President Michael Fence Acting Director Russell Vought ‘Acting Secretary Patrick Shanahan