Companies that sell to the government through GSA's Multiple Award Schedule program are about to lose the rulebook they have used for decades. In a proposed rule published Sept. 22, 2026, the General Services Administration said it wants to pull Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) ordering procedures out of the Federal Acquisition Regulation entirely and rehouse them in a brand-new GSAR Part 538 — shifting the governing text from Title 48, Chapter 1 of the Code of Federal Regulations to Chapter 5.

The move, designated GSAR Case 2026-G501 (RIN 3090-AL13), would end the arrangement under which FAR Subpart 8.4 has told contracting officers how to place orders and set up blanket purchase agreements against FSS contracts. Comments on the proposal are due Oct. 22, 2026. GSA says the change gives the agency more room to manage its own program rather than sharing that authority with the FAR Council.

Why GSA Is Pulling Its Own Program Out of the FAR

The rewrite traces directly to Executive Order 14275, "Restoring Common Sense to Federal Procurement," and to OMB Memorandum M-25-26, which directed the FAR Council to carry out what the administration calls the "Revolutionary FAR Overhaul," or RFO. GSA frames the relocation as part of that broader cleanup effort rather than a policy reversal on how schedules work.

"GSA is proposing to amend the General Services Administration Acquisition Regulation (GSAR) to move Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) ordering procedures from the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) to GSAR part 538," the agency's Office of Acquisition Policy wrote in the Federal Register notice. GSA said the procedures "are being reorganized to harmonize with RFO efforts and improve readability."

Splitting FSS rules out of the FAR is not unprecedented in structure — agencies already maintain their own acquisition regulation supplements — but housing the government's largest multiple-award vehicle's ordering rules outside the FAR's central Part 8 marks a real change in where contracting officers and schedule holders will need to look before they write or respond to an order.

The Companion FAR Council Rule That Empties Out Part 8

GSA's proposal does not stand alone. Four days earlier, on Sept. 18, 2026, the FAR Council published its own proposed rule under FAR case 2026-003, touching FAR Parts 8, 12, 13, 15, 38, 44 and 51. That rule strips FSS ordering language, along with excess-property, Federal Prison Industries and AbilityOne procedures, out of Part 8 altogether. Comments on the FAR Council's version are due Oct. 19, 2026 — three days ahead of the deadline on GSA's companion rule.

Instead of keeping duplicate guidance in the FAR for programs that already have their own governing rules, the Council wants contracting officers to go straight to each program's source material. "This proposed rule would remove duplicative guidance in the FAR and instead would have agencies rely on the rules and procedures of each source, instead," the FAR Council wrote, listing GSA's Federal Supply Schedule program by name alongside excess property, FPI and AbilityOne as the categories being pushed out of Part 8.

What the Rewritten Ordering Procedures Actually Cut

The substance of the new GSAR Part 538 is narrower than what it replaces. GSA's proposal describes the rewritten ordering procedures as addressing "only the essential requirements" for placing orders and establishing blanket purchase agreements against FSS contracts. That is a deliberate trim: much of the current prescriptive framework in FAR Subpart 8.4 — the step-by-step requirements contracting officers currently follow — would not carry over intact. GSA's stated goal is acquisition speed, giving contracting officers a shorter, less procedural set of instructions for running competitions and placing orders under schedule contracts.

For a program with roughly 14,000 active FSS contract holders — about 12,400 of them, or 89%, small businesses, according to GSA's own regulatory analysis — trimming much of that prescriptive framework is a significant bet that fewer required steps will translate into faster orders without opening new inconsistency across contracting offices that no longer share one uniform FAR text.

Part of a Larger FAR Overhaul

The GSAR relocation is not a standalone move. In its companion notice, the FAR Council said it "is issuing twelve proposed rules that collectively will streamline the FAR in its entirety" — the Sept. 18 proposal covering Parts 8, 12, 13, 15, 38, 44 and 51 is one of those twelve. The Part 8 rewrite alone touches four programs beyond FSS: excess federal property, Federal Prison Industries, AbilityOne and the Government Publishing Office, each of which the Council wants agencies to manage under its own source rules rather than duplicate guidance carried in the FAR.

What It Means for Contractors

For schedule holders, the practical effect is a compliance address change with real stakes. Solicitation and ordering language that contracting officers currently cite from FAR Subpart 8.4 will eventually point to GSAR Part 538 instead, and companies that track FAR clauses in their proposal templates, compliance matrices or contract management software will need to update those references once a final rule takes effect. Because the rewritten procedures cover "only the essential requirements," schedule holders should also expect fewer prescriptive steps spelled out in regulation — which shifts more discretion to individual contracting officers and agencies' own supplemental guidance.

Contractors with a stake in how BPA and order procedures are written have a five-week window to weigh in: comments on the FAR Council's Part 8 rule close Oct. 19, 2026, and comments on GSA's GSAR Part 538 rule close Oct. 22, 2026. Industry groups that rely heavily on the Schedules program — GSA Schedule contractors selling IT, professional services and commercial products — are the most likely to have specific concerns about which "essential requirements" survive the rewrite and which procedural protections do not.

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