Amazon's director of government sector has been found to have advised a senior US official on the launch of a web portal for federal procurement of commercial products, something that would have given the e-commerce giant a dominant role in the project, The Guardian reported on Wednesday.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 26th December, 2018) Amazon's director of government sector has been found to have advised a senior US official on the launch of a web portal for Federal procurement of commercial products, something that would have given the e-commerce giant a dominant role in the project, The Guardian reported on Wednesday.
The newspaper cited email correspondence between Amazon's Anne Rung and Government Services Authority official Mary Davie, obtained by the outlet under the Freedom of Information Act. The emails showed Rung advise Davie on the approach the government should take to building an e-commerce platform that would manage federal contracts for anything from stationery to furniture worth billions of Dollars.
The exchange reportedly took place less than a year after Rung quit as chief US acquisition officer in the administration of then-President Barack Obama to join the tech giant in November 2016.
The outlet said US ethics laws require former government officials to wait a year before getting involved in projects that they worked on while in office.
The Seattle-based retailer was awarded several lucrative federal contracts in past years. It has been operating a cloud service for the US intelligence community and supplying commercial goods to local authorities across the country.
It has also been billed as a lead candidate for running a cloud service for the Pentagon. Its success with the US military has reportedly been attributed to the hiring of an ex-brigadier general with the US Air Force, Steven Spano, who has since quit Amazon.
