GAO Flags FAR Overhaul Clause Confusion as the Second Batch of Rewrites Hits an October 19 Comment Deadline

On 6 October GAO released its decision on protests against the Army’s MAPS contract, a $50 billion vehicle for professional and IT services. It upheld the Army. But it said the solicitation’s mix of old Federal Acquisition Regulation clauses and new ones from the administration’s FAR overhaul could leave bidders unable to tell which version applied, and called it “not a model of clarity.”

That’s the problem contractors have described all year. Since the overhaul began, they’ve had to bid against three texts at once: the old FAR, the agency deviations that put the new text into effect early, and the formal proposed rules.

Where the overhaul stands

Executive Order 14275, signed in April 2025, ordered the FAR cut back to what statute requires or what’s “essential to sound procurement.” In the first phase, from May to October 2025, the FAR Council published rewritten parts as model deviations, and agencies adopted them on a rolling basis. We covered that phase in our post on GSA and procurement consolidation.

Formal rulemaking started on 23 June 2026 with four proposed rules covering 20 FAR parts. Among the changes:

• a new Part 40 gathering security requirements, with cyber incidents to be reported within 72 hours;
• protesters at agency level would get redacted evaluation materials;
• contractors would have 90 days, not a year, to submit termination settlement proposals.

The second batch, four more proposed rules covering 16 parts, was published on 18 September. Comments close on 19 October. It would make fixed-price contracts the default, with any other type needing a written justification signed by the agency head. It replaces “discussions” with “negotiations” in competitive source selection, drops the five-year limit on contract length, and adopts Pentagon-style rules on data rights. It also adds a clause implementing a March 2026 executive order on diversity programmes, with noncompliance a cause for suspension or debarment.

The Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy calls this the second of four planned batches. Parts on small business, labour, foreign acquisition, cost accounting and cost principles are still to come. A proposed four-year sunset would make non-statutory FAR sections expire unless renewed.

The Pentagon’s version

The Defense Department moved faster with its own supplement, the DFARS. Class deviations replaced much of its text from 1 February 2026, and DoD has revised many of them since. A formal DFARS proposed rule hasn’t been published.

The complaints

Industry groups and law firms say the overhaul gives contracting officers more discretion and bidders less predictability. Protests may turn on whether a judgment was reasonable rather than whether a rule was followed. There’s no clear plan for contracts already running under old clauses, and 30-day comment periods are short for rules this large.

Why it matters

The federal government spends more than $750 billion a year on contracts. The FAR sets the terms for all of it. A shorter, clearer rulebook could open federal work to more companies. A long transition with three texts in force raises legal risk for everyone, and GAO’s MAPS decision suggests protests will be where the confusion gets sorted out.