As the Department of Defense (DoD) prepares to roll out “JWCC Next” – a follow-on vehicle to the current $9 billion Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract – acting DoD Chief Information Officer (CIO) Katie Arrington said on Thursday that the agency is looking to bring in more “non-traditional companies.”
JWCC provides the DoD with easy access to four hyperscale providers: Google, Oracle, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft. However, JWCC Next is looking to provide access to other cloud providers as well.
“JWCC Next, we’re already working on,” Arrington said at the “GovForward: The ATO and Cloud Security Summit” in Washington on July 24.
“We’re absolutely excited about it,” she said, adding, “We are looking to expand the aperture, and we want small cloud service providers.”
“You can see in the department, we have definitely taken a different approach to looking at, you know, non-traditional companies who generally wouldn’t be involved in the Department of Defense in our world and trying to bring them in and figure out ways that we can incorporate them,” Arrington said.
Arrington explained that her office is working closely with the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), which is developing the contract, as well as the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) office on the effort.
Together, she said they are working to ensure “we get the right requirements, [and] that the functionals have a voice.”
Additionally, she said “AI is going to be an integral part” of the contract and will help the DoD in evaluations.
When asked about what characteristics she’s looking for in non-traditional providers, Arrington said, “AI, innovative AI tools, right? I love anybody that’s doing something with satellites, right? We love satellites, but also anybody that has new ways to think about the weather, right? If there’s a better, faster way … absolutely, all day. And then, of course, business systems. You know, everything flows into business systems. So, everything is on the table right now.”
Arrington said she did not want to commit to a timeline for when industry can expect JWCC Next, but noted that she’s reviewing the responses to the request for information (RFI) now.
Nevertheless, when John Hale, chief of product management and development at DISA, announced JWCC Next in March, he said industry could expect the contract sometime around fall 2026.
Hale said that DISA completed the requirements document for JWCC Next in February and was then developing the acquisition strategy.
“That will lay out the plan for when and how that contract goes forward. I would expect it to hit the street probably in 18 months,” he said.