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It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

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Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#41

Post by IAmEveryone »

caseysoftware wrote: post #36
ceejayoz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The evidence we received" is fairly meaningless when coupled with "we weren't allowed to obtain the evidence we wanted ".

I've lived through an IG investigation. You generally only want to respond in writing so you give a correct and complete answer instead of misspeaking and having it used against you, your project, or agency later on. It doesn't hold the legal consequences of screwing up an FBI interview but can be devastating professionally.

Did you miss the quote literally starting this (sub)thread?

Senior Defense Department officials were barred from answering questions on the subject during interviews

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#42

Post by IAmEveryone »

caseysoftware wrote: post #25
ceejayoz wrote: post #7

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/15/pentagon-amazon-tru... > The Pentagon’s inspector general “could not definitively determine” whether the White House influenced the procurement process for a major cloud computing contract because senior Defense Department officials were barred from answering questions on the subject during interviews, according to a 313-page report released on Wednesday.

A quote past the first paragraph of the story: > the IG said "we believe the evidence we received showed that the DoD personnel who evaluated proposals and made the source-selection awarding Microsoft the JEDI Cloud contract were not pressured about their decision on the award of the contract by any DoD leaders more senior to them, who may have communicated with the White House." As with most articles, the juicy, sal…

That sentence seems purpose-build to be so obviously trying to hide the truth as to be giving it away.

It means the "DoD personnel who evaluated proposals" were not pressured by senior DoD leaders, but by White House officials directly.

Or why would the statement explicitly mention "DoD leaders more senior to them"? If they were not pressured, why not simply say "DoD personnel were not pressured to award..."? And why would they be barred from testifying?

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#43

Post by ceejayoz »

caseysoftware wrote: post #36
ceejayoz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The evidence we received" is fairly meaningless when coupled with "we weren't allowed to obtain the evidence we wanted ".

I've lived through an IG investigation. You generally only want to respond in writing so you give a correct and complete answer instead of misspeaking and having it used against you, your project, or agency later on. It doesn't hold the legal consequences of screwing up an FBI interview but can be devastating professionally.

> you give a correct and complete answer

The article asserts no answer; that they were forbidden to answer those questions. Written or otherwise.

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#44

Post by gpm »

> A central premise of the federal procurement system is that “full and fair competition“ on a “level playing field“ means that competitors are asked to make their best bids without knowing what the other has bid or will bid. That principle ensures that companies seeking to do business with the federal government offer their best price from the beginning.

No, it doesn't. This is known as a first-price sealed bid auction. It guarantees they will roughly speaking offer the government the highest price they think they will win at, not their lowest price. For a more detailed analysis see the wikipedia aritcle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-price_sealed-bid_auction

The "standard" (mathematical) answer to getting this property would be to run a second-price sealed bid auction, where the winner is the player with the lowest bid, but they get paid the amount of the second lowest bid, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey_auction

I'm not sure how you would best adjust this system for non-identical goods.

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#45

Post by wahern »

roel_v wrote: post #23
partiallypro wrote: post #2

My take on this whole thing, is the Amazon basically wrote the entire scope...so they just thought they were going to win because only they would meet it (this was a bit of a scandal just a few months back.) They bid high, and then they lost. Now they are mad that their lobbying wasn't a 100% success, so they are suing. It's all so very Amazon.

Having been on the winning side of a contract once for a bid that was clearly 100% written by a competitor, the Big Dog in our industry, in such a way that they absolutely thought only they could ever be meeting the terms - and then winning that bid by offering a better product at a lower price, and faster, I can a little bit imagine how satisfying this win must have been for the Microsoft bid manager or whatever the…

> then winning that bid by offering a better product at a lower price, and faster,

Did you actually deliver on time and on budget?

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#47

Post by chucky_z »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #9
thisisnico wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft can offer fully-integrated solutions with their already incredibly popular software. So that's a distinct advantage.

Azure is less friendly as a technology practitioner (compared to working with AWS), but I fully appreciate the value you describe. Does AWS have Active Directory as a first class citizen? Office 365? Outlook/Exchange? No.

AWS does offer AD as a first class citizen... More than Azure.

AzureAD is not Active Directory, and unless something has changed a lot in the last year (maybe it has?), Azure does not offer anything that looks, smells, and feels like on-prem AD in the cloud.

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#48

Post by 23B1 »

wahern wrote: post #45
roel_v wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been on the winning side of a contract once for a bid that was clearly 100% written by a competitor, the Big Dog in our industry, in such a way that they absolutely thought only they could ever be meeting the terms - and then winning that bid by offering a better product at a lower price, and faster, I can a little bit imagine how satisfying this win must have been for the Microsoft bid manager or whatever the…

> then winning that bid by offering a better product at a lower price, and faster, Did you actually deliver on time and on budget?

crickets heh

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#49

Post by IAmEveryone »

partiallypro wrote: post #2

My take on this whole thing, is the Amazon basically wrote the entire scope...so they just thought they were going to win because only they would meet it (this was a bit of a scandal just a few months back.) They bid high, and then they lost. Now they are mad that their lobbying wasn't a 100% success, so they are suing. It's all so very Amazon.

There's considerable evidence that Amazon lost this because the President doesn't like The Washington Post.

Even assuming the accusations against Amazon are true as well: what's worse? (a) A vendor gaining unfair advantage and overcharging by 10%? Or, (b), the President using the power of the federal government to punish journalists for criticising him?

The Washington Post was, by the way, the newspaper that uncovered that the Trump Foundation had spent their complete budget at Trump properties or for personal expenditures such as the famous painting.

This was several million $, all donated by members of the public, ostensibly intended to help veterans. These accusations lead to a court case, which the foundation lost, requiring it to be shut down and his children being barred from serving on non-profit boards in the future.

So, to answer the choice from the beginning: if you choose (b) and allow the WashPo and other media to be pressured into silence, you'll lose the free press and still get the corruption.

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#50

Post by beerandt »

ceejayoz wrote: post #43
caseysoftware wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lived through an IG investigation. You generally only want to respond in writing so you give a correct and complete answer instead of misspeaking and having it used against you, your project, or agency later on. It doesn't hold the legal consequences of screwing up an FBI interview but can be devastating professionally.

> you give a correct and complete answer The article asserts no answer; that they were forbidden to answer those questions. Written or otherwise.

>barred from answering questions on the subject during interviews
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