Army Chief Information Officer (CIO) Leonel T. Garciga has ordered all new Army cloud procurements to route through the Pentagon’s Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract, streamlining acquisitions under a single enterprise-wide vehicle, according to a June 30 memorandum.
In December 2022, the Department of Defense (DoD) awarded the $9 billion contract to Google, Oracle, Microsoft, and Amazon to create a unified, enterprise-wide cloud infrastructure. Since then, the DoD has issued $2.7 billion in task orders under the contract, with plans to expand access through a follow-on effort known as “JWCC Next,” which will include additional cloud providers.
Initially, DoD required only Secret-level (Impact Level 6) and Top Secret cloud computing acquisitions within the military services to use JWCC, while allowing the services to continue using their own procurement vehicles for all other cloud needs.
Garciga is now changing that for the Army – mandating that all new cloud acquisitions, including unclassified and lower-impact levels (IL2/4/5), go through JWCC.
He wrote that by consolidating procurement under JWCC, the Army ensures “centralize[d] and streamline[d] cloud procurement to enhance oversight, reporting, and operational efficiency.”
The memo designates the Enterprise Cloud Management Agency (ECMA) as the central authority for brokering and managing purchases through the JWCC.
Non-NIPR accounts requiring commercial cloud support for IL2 workloads will continue to use the Army CIO’s designated contract vehicle until those services are migrated into JWCC. Existing CSO procurements made through other channels must coordinate with ECMA to develop transition plans.
For intelligence community cloud needs, particularly top secret capabilities, procurement will remain under the oversight of the Army Military Intelligence Cloud Computing Service Provider (AC2SP). Service directorates will submit their intelligence CSO requirements where AC2SP will broker procurement using the JWCC contracts via the IC Cloud Works Program Management Office, consistent with Army governance policies.