FAR Council opens 17-part rewrite for July comments

Federal News Network reports that the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council is moving the first 17 parts of the Federal Acquisition Regulation rewrite into formal rulemaking, with comments accepted through mid-July. The tranche covers Parts 1 through 7, 10, 18, 24, 26, 29, 33, 39, 40, 41, 49 and 53. That is not a housekeeping list. It includes competition, acquisition planning, market research, protests, information and communications technology acquisition, information security, supply chain security, terminations and forms.

The operational point is the deadline. Contractors have already seen much of the rewrite through deviations, according to the report, but an anonymous OMB official told Federal News Network that the proposed rules include additional differences and changes. That makes the mid-July window more than a courtesy round. For primes, subcontractors and managed service providers, it is the formal place to say where the deviation language breaks, where the new text creates ambiguity, and where the rule should preserve flexibility before it becomes the final FAR.

The pace matches the administration’s posture. President Donald Trump’s April 2025 executive order started what Federal News Network describes as the first FAR rewrite in 40 years, directing the Office of Federal Procurement Policy and the FAR Council to keep provisions required by statute or essential to sound procurement and remove those that do not advance those objectives. The report says officials want all proposed rules finalized by the end of the calendar year, with two more batches coming, including heavily used Parts 8, 12, 16 and 19.

The open question is how much changed between the deviations and the proposed rules. Federal News Network’s examples include a Part 10 threshold increase for market research on certain non-commercial subcontracts from $6 million to $7.5 million, changes to negotiations and communications, permission for oral acquisition planning, a process for correcting minor bid errors, and a risk-based approach to close-out audits for contracts over $2 million. Those are not all equally material, but they are the kind of details that become expensive once incorporated into standard solicitations and contract administration.

For practitioners, the assignment is narrow and immediate: compare the proposed text against the April 2025 deviation baseline, identify provisions that materially affect bidding, subcontracting, IT and security requirements, and file comments before mid-July. The administration can call the schedule ambitious. Contractors should treat it as binding until the FAR Council says otherwise.