Pentagon 'wishes to reconsider' awarding JEDI contract to Microsoft

The US Department of Defense said Thursday it wants to reconsider its decision to award a multi-billion-dollar military cloud computing contract to Microsoft in a bidding process Amazon claims was tainted by politics.

A judge last month issued an order at Amazon's request temporarily blocking the US military from starting work on the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract, or JEDI.

In a filing late Thursday in a federal court, government attorneys asked for the matter to be "remanded," or sent back, to the Pentagon "for 120 days to reconsider certain aspects of the challenged agency decision." It is up to the court whether the case is remanded or proceeds.

The DoD attorneys said the motion came in response to the judge stalling the awarding of the JEDI contract on the grounds Amazon Web Services (AWS) would "likely be able to show" that the department erred in evaluating its proposal.

"We are pleased that the DoD has acknowledged 'substantial and legitimate' issues that affected the JEDI award decision, and that corrective action is necessary," an AWS spokesperson said in a statement.

"We look forward to complete, fair, and effective corrective action that fully insulates the re-evaluation from political influence and corrects the many issues affecting the initial flawed award."