On April 15, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14275, "Restoring Common Sense to Federal Procurement," directing the Office of Federal Procurement Policy and the FAR Council to undertake the most significant overhaul of the Federal Acquisition Regulation in decades. By August 2025, OFPP had announced the launch of active rulemaking. As of mid-2026, that process is well underway — and its implications for contracting officers, program managers, and acquisition teams are substantial.
This is not a routine FAR case. The administration has signaled its intent to fundamentally restructure how the government buys commercial products and services — streamlining procedures that have accumulated layers of complexity over decades. For acquisition professionals, the question isn't whether this will affect your work. It's whether your team will be prepared when the changes land.
The core thrust of EO 14275 is to reduce regulatory burden in federal procurement and align government buying practices more closely with commercial market norms. The specific directives include:
The FAR overhaul represents a fundamental shift in the government's philosophy toward commercial buying — from "prove it qualifies" to "assume it qualifies unless there's a specific reason not to." That's a significant change in default posture for acquisition teams that have operated under the opposite assumption for years.
One of the areas most likely to see near-term change is source selection for commercial products and services. The current FAR Part 12 commercial item procedures are supposed to be simplified relative to FAR Parts 13-15, but in practice many agencies apply traditional source selection documentation requirements to commercial acquisitions anyway — out of habit, risk aversion, or uncertainty about what's actually required.
The EO 14275 overhaul is expected to draw a sharper line: when you're buying a commercial product or service, the evaluation process should look more like a commercial buying decision and less like a formal source selection with full technical evaluation panels and consensus scoring documentation. For agencies with acquisition shops that have built source selection processes around comprehensive documentation, this will require adjusting workflows and templates.
Importantly, this doesn't mean source selection documentation becomes unimportant — it means it becomes more targeted. The documentation that matters is what justifies the award decision, not documentation for its own sake. Bid protest risk doesn't disappear with a lighter process; it shifts toward whether the process was appropriately calibrated to the acquisition.
A streamlined FAR doesn't simplify contract administration in the near term — it creates a transition period where existing contracts operate under old rules while new awards use revised procedures. Acquisition teams will need to track which contracts were awarded under which version of the FAR, and ensure their administration processes are calibrated accordingly.
For CORs in particular, the transition raises practical questions: which clauses still apply to your existing portfolio? What documentation requirements remain for ongoing contracts? Which new award templates reflect the updated procedures?
A contract tracking system that captures the regulatory framework applicable to each contract — not just the dollar value and period of performance — becomes more valuable in a transition environment. When the FAR is stable, most CORs can apply the same procedures to every contract. When it's changing, the differences matter.
The rulemaking is underway but final rules take time. Here's what acquisition professionals can do now:
The FAR overhaul is the most consequential regulatory development in federal procurement in a generation. Agencies that prepare proactively — updating templates, training staff, and building flexible acquisition infrastructure — will adapt faster than those that wait for final rules before making changes. The direction of travel is clear even if the final destination isn't yet published.
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