The administration's ambitious effort to rewrite the Federal Acquisition Regulation from scratch — launched by Executive Order 14275, "Restoring Common Sense to Federal Procurement," in April 2025 — is running behind schedule at the Office of Management and Budget, where final rules have accumulated for review while procurement officials across the government continue operating under a patchwork of interim class deviations, Washington Technology reported in April. The delay is creating compliance uncertainty for contractors who need to know which version of the FAR governs their current solicitations and contracts.

Two-Track Structure: Deviations Now, Rules Later

The Revolutionary FAR Overhaul (RFO) has proceeded on two parallel tracks since the April 2025 executive order. On the fast track, individual agencies have issued class deviations — agency-specific departures from the standard FAR that do not require public notice and comment — to implement portions of the overhaul immediately. These deviations are effective upon issuance and apply to contracts awarded by the issuing agency. The Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, and the General Services Administration have each issued multiple class deviations covering contract types (Part 16), commercial item procedures (Part 12), small business requirements (Part 19), and socioeconomic clauses (Part 22).

On the slow track, the FAR Council — comprising representatives from DoD, NASA, and GSA — is developing formal proposed rules that will amend the standard FAR text through the full Administrative Procedure Act notice-and-comment process. These proposed rules, once published in the Federal Register, invite public comment from contractors, industry associations, legal experts, and citizen groups. Final rules incorporate responses to those comments and become enforceable across all federal agencies — not just those that issued deviations.

The problem: final rules are piling up at OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), which must review each rule for consistency with the executive order's policy goals, interagency coordination, and economic impact analysis requirements. OIRA reviews, which are supposed to take no more than 90 days for significant rules, are running longer as OIRA staff grapple with the unusual scope of the overhaul and the politically charged nature of some provisions.

What's Been Issued and What Hasn't

As of May 2026, the following Phase 1 actions are in effect through class deviations:

  • Commercial product and service presumption (Part 12): Agencies must presume all acquisitions are of commercial products or services unless a written determination establishes otherwise, reversing decades of practice in which FAR Part 15 competitive procedures were the default.
  • Contract type preference (Part 16): Agencies must prefer FFP at all dollar levels, consistent with the April 30, 2026, executive order (deviations predated and informed the EO language).
  • Simplified acquisition threshold increases: SAT raised from $250,000 to $500,000 for most acquisitions; micro-purchase threshold raised from $10,000 to $25,000.
  • Small business set-aside reductions (Part 19): Mandatory set-aside requirement eliminated for acquisitions between $25,000 and $250,000; contracting officers retain discretion to set aside but are no longer required to.

Still awaiting OMB OIRA clearance as of early May 2026:

  • Final rule on contractor responsibility determinations (Part 9) — includes new DEI-related responsibility criteria
  • Final rule on labor standards and prevailing wage requirements (Part 22) — touches Davis-Bacon and Service Contract Act implementations
  • Final rule on socioeconomic program consolidation (Part 26) — reorganizes HUBZone, 8(a), SDVOSB, and WOSB programs
  • Proposed rule on commercial software licensing (new Part 39 subpart) — addresses open source, SaaS, and perpetual license distinctions

Compliance Uncertainty for Contractors

The gap between fast-track deviations and slow-track final rules creates a compliance challenge that acquisition lawyers are calling the "deviation patchwork problem." A contractor competing on a DoD solicitation faces DoD's class deviation provisions; the same contractor competing on a GSA Multiple Award Schedule order faces GSA's class deviations; a NASA contract follows NASA's deviations; and all three sets of deviations may diverge from each other and from whatever the pending final FAR rule will eventually say.

For large primes with sophisticated acquisition counsel, this is manageable but expensive. For small businesses that rely on FAR compliance checklists and standard representations and certifications, the patchwork creates real risk of inadvertent non-compliance. The Coalition for Government Procurement, the Professional Services Council, and other industry associations have urged FAR Council to publish a consolidated crosswalk document mapping each deviation to the anticipated final rule text — a request that has not yet been fulfilled as of this writing.

What It Means for Contractors

  • Review each solicitation's clause matrix carefully — the governing FAR provisions are the solicitation's incorporated clauses, not the standard FAR text, if an agency-specific deviation applies.
  • Update your representations and certifications for each agency separately; the SAM.gov annual reps-and-certs process may not automatically reflect agency-specific deviation requirements that diverge from the standard FAR.
  • Small businesses: the elimination of mandatory set-asides in the $25K-$250K range under several agency deviations means you may be competing on full-and-open solicitations in that range for the first time — track your agencies' deviation notices on their acquisition websites and on acquisition.gov/far-overhaul.
  • Submit comments on any OIRA-released proposed rules promptly; the notice-and-comment record matters for any future legal challenges to final rules, and industry input can still shape the final rule text in commercially important ways.
  • Track acquisition.gov/far-overhaul, which is updated as deviations and proposed rules are issued.

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