Top Amazon boss privately advised US government on web portal worth billions to tech firm

Source: The Guardian

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington

Wed 26 Dec 2018 06.00 GMT

A top Amazon executive privately advised the Trump administration on the launch of a new internet portal that is expected to generate billions of dollars for the technology company and give it a dominant role in how the US government buys everything from paper clips to office chairs. Emails seen by the Guardian show that the Amazon executive Anne Rung communicated with a top official at the Government Services Authority (GSA) about the approach the government would take to create the new portal, even before the legislation that created it – known to its critics as the “Amazon amendment” – was signed into law late last year.

The 2017 correspondence between Rung – a former official in the Obama administration credited with transforming the federal government’s procurement policies before she joined Amazon – and Mary Davie at the GSA, offers new insights into how Amazon has used key former government officials it now employs – directly and as consultants – to gain influence and potentially shape lucrative government contracts.

It has not yet been determined which companies will build the US government’s new e-commerce portal, but Amazon is widely expected to take on a dominant role, giving it a major foothold in the $53bn market for federal procurement of commercial products.

Amazon is also the frontrunner to win a separate $10bn cloud computing contract with the Pentagon, known as Jedi, which will in effect move the defense department’s data on to a commercially run cloud computing system.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/26/amazon-anne-rung-government-services-authority