The US Department of Defence (DoD) has requested permission to reconsider parts of its decision to award its $10 billion cloud migration contract to Microsoft, court filings have revealed.
These concern parts of Microsoft's bid that detail price scenarios and online marketplaces which have been deemed not "technically feasible" by the US Federal Court of Claims.
Work on the Joint Enterprise Defence Infrastructure (JEDI) project was halted in February after AWS launched a legal appeal that the evaluation of the bidding process was flawed; the tech firm also suggested it was subject to unfair political influence.
Federal Claims Judge Patricia Cambell-Smith, who ordered the suspension of Microsoft's work on JEDI, said that AWS was "likely to succeed" in its legal challenge as the DoD had improperly evaluated a Microsoft storage price scenario.
Now lawyers for the US government have asked for "120 days to reconsider certain aspects of the challenged agency decision", according to court filings made late on Thursday.
"DoD does not intend to conduct discussions with offerors or to accept proposal revisions with respect to any aspect of the solicitation other than price scenario," the filing said, according to Reuters.
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There are no exact details on what the issue is with the pricing proposed by Microsoft but the company feels it is an easy problem to solve. A spokesman said in a statement to Bloomberg that it supports the decision to reconsider a small number of factors "as it is likely the fastest way to resolve all issues and quickly provide the needed modern technology to people across our armed forces".
Political influence, namely from President Donald Trump, is also a significant part of AWS' legal challenge, but as yet, the courts have not mentioned any action on that element of the case.
"We are pleased that the DoD has acknowledged 'substantial and legitimate' issues that affected the JEDI award decision, and that corrective action is necessary," a spokesman for AWS said to Reuters.
