On April 15, 2025, President Donald J. Trump issued Executive Order 14275, Restoring Common Sense to Federal Procurement, to implement a “comprehensive reform of the FAR [Federal Acquisition Regulation].” The executive order notes that the FAR has swelled to more than 2,000 pages of regulations, which has caused excessive bureaucracy and an overly complicated regulatory framework. To achieve the executive order’s stated objective that the FAR should be limited to only provisions required by statute or essential to sound procurement, the FAR Council shall amend the FAR within 180 days to include only statutorily required provisions or provisions that are otherwise necessary to:

• Support simplicity and usability
• Strengthen the efficacy of the procurement system
• Protect economic or national security interests

The executive order includes a provision for a four-year “sunsetting” of FAR provisions considered “otherwise necessary” but not statutorily required.

The Revolutionary FAR Overhaul will be led by the Office of Federal Procurement Policy and the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council (FAR Council). Model deviation guidance issued by the FAR Council will be “adopted by agencies until the FAR is formally revised through rulemaking.” Non-regulatory content will be included in new Buying Guides designed to provide practical advice for applying the FAR to real-world buying scenarios.

As of the time of publication, deviation guidance has been issued for the following FAR parts:

• FAR Part 1 – Federal Acquisition Regulations System
• FAR Part 6 – Competition Requirements
• FAR Part 10 – Market Research
• FAR Part 11 – Describing Agency Needs
• FAR Part 18 – Emergency Acquisitions
• FAR Part 34 – Major System Acquisition
• FAR Part 39 – Acquisition of Information Technology
• FAR Part 43 – Contract Modifications

The Restoring Common Sense to Federal Procurement executive order can be found here.

The Revolutionary FAR Overhaul website can be found here.