The United States has filed a motion for voluntary remand in the ongoing suit against Amazon Web Services (AWS). The United States has requested that the court remand the case to the United States Department of Defense (DoD) for 120 days for review. The motion is in response to Amazon’s original complaint about the DoD’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract, which was awarded to Microsoft last year. Counsel for AWS said that it opposes the motion; Microsoft, an intervenor, does not oppose the motion.
The DoD wants to “reconsider its evaluation of the technical aspects of Price Scenario 6, and intends to issue a solicitation amendment and to accept limited proposal revisions addressing the offerors’ technical approach to that price scenario.” The revised proposals would “be constrained by the storage solutions and unit prices contained in offerors’ final proposal revisions.” The DoD will also “reconsider its evaluation of the offerors’ online marketplace offerings and may conduct clarifications with the offerors relating to the availability of marketplace offerings. It will also “reconsider its award decision in response to the other technical challenges presented by AWS.”
Previously, AWS challenged the DoD awarding the bid to Microsoft and the court granted AWS’s motion for preliminary injunction and the judge found that AWS would likely be able to illustrate the DoD’s error when evaluating proposals.
The DoD wants the court to grant the remand “in the interest of justice because it will provide the agency with an opportunity to reconsider the award decision at issue in light of AWS’s allegations.” The Department of Defense requests a remand in good faith as it could present the need for further litigation. After the proposed remand proceeding, the parties will most likely have to fill out a joint status report, which will provide each party’s position and if more litigation is necessary, among other information. DoD states that the court should not brief motions for judgment on the administrative record as it would be pointless; instead, they recommend a stay of proceedings during the remand.