The FAR Council is in the middle of the most significant rewrite of the Federal Acquisition Regulation in its forty-year history. Acting on Executive Order 14275, Restoring Common Sense to Federal Procurement, and OMB Memorandum M-25-26, the Council is implementing the “Revolutionary FAR Overhaul” (RFO) in two phases. In phase one, the Council issued model class deviations that replaced each FAR part on an interim basis.  We discussed those deviations earlier. In phase two, now underway, the Council is issuing a series of proposed rules that will formalize those deviations through notice-and-comment rulemaking. Proposes rules implementing the RFO for twenty of the FAR Parts were issued today:

• FAR Parts 6 (Competition Requirements), 7 (Acquisition Planning), 10 (Market Research), 18 (Emergency Acquisitions), 26 (Other Socioeconomic Programs), 37 (Service Contracting), and 41 (Acquisition of Utility Services)
• FAR Part 1 (Federal Acquisition Regulations System), 2 (Definitions of Words and Terms), 4 (Administrative and Information Matters), 33 (Protests, Disputes, and  Appeals), 39 (Acquisition of Information and Communication Technology), and 40 (Information Security and Supply Chain Security)
• FAR Parts 5 (Publicizing Contract Actions), 24 (Protection of Privacy and Freedom of Information), and 29 (Taxes)
• FAR Part 3 (Improper Business Practices and Personal Conflicts of Interest) and 49 (Termination of Contracts)

The FAR Council also proposes corresponding changes to FAR Part 52 (Solicitation Provisions and Contract Clauses) and 53 (Forms), as part of the changes.

Most of the RFO is plain-language reorganization that does not change underlying requirements. But several changes are substantive, and a handful of them matter a great deal to Alaska Native Corporations (ANCs), Tribes, Native Hawaiian Organizations (NHOs), and the small business community generally. This update first highlights the changes we believe warrant the most attention and, where appropriate, a comment to the FAR Council; it then provides a comprehensive survey of the balance of the proposed changes across every FAR part the Council has addressed in the phase-two rules we have reviewed, and a summary table comparing all of them. In brief, the highlighted areas are:

• SAM.gov reps and certifications. The Council proposes to eliminate FAR 52.204-8 (Annual Representations and Certifications), keep only entity-level reps and certs in SAM, and move procurement-specific reps and certs into individual solicitations. This is a meaningful, generally favorable change to how every registrant maintains its SAM profile.
• Terminations for convenience. The settlement-proposal clock is compressed from one year to 90 days, and the settlement audit shifts from mandatory to permissive/risk-based.
• The four-year regulatory sunset. New FAR 1.109 will sunset every non-statutory FAR section after four years unless renewed. The above-SAT Rule of Two in Part 19 is not statutorily mandated — and is therefore exposed.
• Consolidation and contract vehicles. A new commercial-preference hierarchy in Part 7 pushes contracting officers toward existing Governmentwide vehicles, increasing the practical importance of holding the right schedules and GWACs.
• 8(a) sole-source thresholds. The proposed rule clarifies the framework for sole-source 8(a) awards and recognizes the higher civilian justification threshold. The $150 million DoD threshold is supplied separately by a DoD class deviation rather than by the proposed rule itself.
• Small business marketing. The Council continues to replace program-specific references (8(a), HUBZone, WOSB, SDVOSB) with the generic phrase “small business concerns,” and converts the public-announcement requirement for large awards from mandatory to permissive.
• A new purpose statement, enhanced agency-level disclosure, and a 35-day agency target make the agency forum more useful, while the Council also signals skepticism toward incumbent “disruption” protests.

Comment deadline. Comments on the phase-two proposed rules discussed here are due 30 days after Federal Register publication. For the rules scheduled to publish on June 23, 2026, which places the deadline on or about July 23, 2026. Comments are submitted at regulations.gov under the applicable FAR Case number (see the Conclusion). ANCs with a stake in any of the issues below may consider submitting comments, and we are available to assist.

Detailed Discussion

1. Changes to SAM.gov Required Certifications and Updates

The proposed revisions to FAR Part 4 (FAR Case 2026-001) are, for most contractors, the most consequential administrative change in this batch of the RFO, and the change is favorable. The Council proposes to fundamentally restructure how entity information is collected from offerors and maintained in the System for Award Management (SAM).

Elimination of 52.204-8. The centerpiece is the removal of FAR provision 52.204-8, Annual Representations and Certifications. Under current practice, every offeror completes and annually refreshes a lengthy set of representations and certifications in SAM, and the contracting officer incorporates them by reference. The Council proposes to retire that provision entirely and to draw a clean line between two categories of information.

Entity-level versus procurement-specific information. Going forward, only entity-level representations and certifications, those that describe the company itself and do not change from one procurement to the next (i.e., size and socioeconomic status), will remain in SAM. Representations and certifications that are procurement-specific (those whose answer can differ depending on what is being bought) will be removed from SAM and instead collected in the individual solicitation as prescribed in the FAR. The Council’s stated objective is to reduce the burden of maintaining a sprawling SAM profile and to cut down on the recurring requests to update SAM information.

Two collection paths. The proposed rule establishes two clear paths for collecting entity information. Where SAM registration is required, a revised provision at 52.204-7 (renamed “System for Award Management—Registration”) and a revised clause at 52.204-13 (“System for Award Management—Maintenance”) consolidate the entity-level information previously spread across five separate provisions and two separate clauses. Where SAM registration is not required, a new provision at 52.204-XX (Offeror Identification) and a new clause at 52.204-YY (Contractor Identification) perform the same consolidating function. As part of this consolidation, the Council proposes to delete a series of now-redundant provisions, including 52.204-3 (Taxpayer Identification), 52.204-6 (Unique Entity Identifier), 52.204-16 (CAGE Code Reporting), 52.204-17 (Ownership or Control of Offeror), and 52.204-20 (Predecessor of Offeror), folding their content into the two consolidated paths.

Commercial exclusions. The proposed rule also excludes commercial-acquisition contracts from the executive-compensation and service-contract reporting clauses (52.204-10, 52.204-14, and 52.204-15), further reducing the compliance load on commercial-item and commercial-services work.

2. Terminations for Convenience: Compressed Settlement Timeline and Permissive Audit

The RFO’s revisions to FAR Part 49 contain two changes relevant to ANCs and small businesses performing cost-type or larger fixed-price work, because both alter long-settled expectations about how a convenience termination is wound up.

Settlement-proposal clock compressed from one year to 90 days. Under the longstanding rule, a contractor whose contract is terminated for convenience has one year from the effective date of termination to submit its settlement proposal, with the contracting officer authorized to extend that period. The RFO compresses that window significantly: the contractor now has 90 days to submit its settlement proposal, and the available extension is correspondingly reduced (from up to a year to up to 60 days). The related inventory-disposal schedule is likewise compressed (from 120 days to 60 days).

Settlement audit shifts from mandatory to permissive. The RFO also changes the audit posture for settlement proposals. Under prior practice, audit of a termination settlement proposal was effectively mandatory above the applicable thresholds, driven by a cost-or-pricing-data trigger. The RFO makes the audit permissive and risk-based, a discretionary determination by the termination contracting officer rather than an automatic step. The discretion cuts both ways: a TCO may decline to audit a smaller, well-documented proposal and resolve it quickly, but may also focus audit resources on larger noncommercial sole-source settlements. The small-business protections in Part 49, priority handling of small business terminations and the SBA-notice safeguards on default terminations, are preserved.

Comment considerations. ANCs, Tribes, and NHOs may consider reviewing the compressed 90-day settlement-proposal window and the shift to a permissive, risk-based audit, and submitting comments on the operational effect of the shortened timeline on contractors with limited administrative capacity.

3. The Four-Year Regulatory Sunset and Its Exposure of the Rule of Two

The mechanism. New FAR 1.109 (FAR Case 2026-001) introduces a regulatory sunset into the FAR for the first time. Under it, every FAR section that is not required by statute will expire four years after its effective date unless the FAR Council affirmatively renews it through rulemaking. The Council describes this as a built-in mechanism to prevent the accumulation of outdated regulations, and it anticipates running periodic sunset-review rulemakings that invite public comment on what should be allowed to lapse. Sections do not actually disappear from the Code of Federal Regulations until removed through rulemaking, but the policy direction is clear: non-statutory provisions now carry an expiration date and must be renewed on a recurring basis.

Impact on ANCs, Tribes, and NHOs. Most of the socioeconomic contracting regulations that ANCs, Tribes, and NHOs rely on are grounded in statute, the 8(a) program and its sole-source authority (15 U.S.C. ch. 14A), HUBZone, and the small business size standards. Statutory requirements do not sunset under 1.109. The risk lies with the non-statutory requirements and implementing details that the FAR layers on top of the statutes.  The most prominent example for ANCs, Tribes, and NHOs is the Rule of Two as it applies above the Simplified Acquisition Threshold.

The Rule of Two and its statutory footing. The FAR Overhaul of FAR 19.104 preserved the Rule of Two.  Above the micro-purchase threshold, the contracting officer must set an acquisition aside for small business where there is a reasonable expectation of offers from two or more responsible small business concerns at fair-market prices. The Rule of Two is, however, statutorily required only between the micro-purchase threshold and the Simplified Acquisition Threshold (SAT). As the FAR Council’s own Companion Guide to Part 19 acknowledges, the Council retained the Rule of Two above the SAT as a matter of “sound procurement” — not because a statute compels it. That distinction, which was largely academic before the RFO, takes on new significance under 1.109: because the above-SAT Rule of Two is not statutorily mandated, it is the kind of non-statutory provision that the four-year sunset could reach in a future review cycle if the Council does not renew it.

Comment considerations. The above-SAT Rule of Two supports a large share of small business set-aside dollars. If it were allowed to lapse or were narrowed in a future sunset-review rulemaking, the mandatory character of set-asides on larger procurements could be affected, shifting discretion back to contracting officers on whether to set work aside. The current RFO does not propose to eliminate the above-SAT Rule of Two; the Council has retained it. But the sunset framework changes the posture from “durable unless repealed” to “expires unless renewed.” ANCs, Tribes, and NHOs may consider submitting comments on FAR 1.109, for example, on whether the above-SAT Rule of Two should be treated as exempt from the sunset or expressly committed to renewal, and may consider reviewing each periodic sunset-review rulemaking as it is issued, together with any other non-statutory provision in Part 19 or elsewhere on which the organization specifically relies.

4. Consolidation and the Migration of Work to Contract Vehicles and Schedules

A recurring theme across the RFO, and one with strategic consequences for ANCs, Tribes, and NHOs, is the Council’s push to channel requirements through existing, established contract vehicles rather than through new, open-market awards. This theme is most concrete in the revised Part 7.

The commercial-preference hierarchy. Revised FAR 7.201(f) (FAR Case 2026-002) establishes a mandatory, ordered preference that directs contracting officers to satisfy requirements first through commercial products and services available on established Governmentwide vehicles, Multiple Award Schedule / Federal Supply Schedule contracts, Governmentwide acquisition contracts (GWACs), and best-in-class (BIC) vehicles, before turning to custom or open-market solutions.

Comment considerations. ANCs, Tribes, and NHOs may consider reviewing their current vehicle positions against the categories of work they pursue, and may consider submitting comments on how the consolidation and commercial-vehicle emphasis in Part 7 interacts with the sole-source 8(a) authority and the small business set-aside requirements.

5. 8(a) Sole-Source Thresholds: Clarifying Language in the Proposed Rule

The RFO’s treatment of 8(a) sole-source awards is, on balance, favorable to ANCs, Tribes, and NHOs. The program and its sole-source authority are preserved, and the proposed rule and the revised FAR framework clarify the standards that govern when a written justification and approval (J&A) is required for a sole-source 8(a) award.

The clarifying benefit. Revised FAR 6.103-5 preserves sole-source authority for 8(a) and other socioeconomic concerns and states the conditions under which a sole-source award may be made without the full-and-open-competition justification, recognizing that statutes expressly authorizing or requiring an award from a specified source, including the 8(a) program (15 U.S.C. ch. 14A), support sole-source awards. The revised Part 19 carries forward the 8(a) competitive and sole-source framework and, for civilian agencies, recognizes that SBA may accept a sole-source 8(a) requirement for negotiation up to $30 million before a justification is required. The net effect is a clearer, better-organized statement of the 8(a) sole-source framework than the prior FAR provided, which benefits ANCs, Tribes, and NHOs by reducing ambiguity about the governing standard for civilian directed awards.

Note on the DoD $150 million threshold. The $150 million threshold that applies to DoD sole-source 8(a) awards to ANCs, Tribes, and NHOs is not contained in this proposed rule. That threshold is supplied separately by a DoD class deviation. Under DoD Class Deviation 2026-O0037 (effective February 1, 2026), contracting officers are directed to use the revised RFO FAR Part 19 and the attached deviated DFARS Part 219 and PGI in lieu of the original FAR and DFARS provisions. The deviated DFARS supplies the operative DoD rule at 219.208-2: in lieu of the threshold at FAR 19.208-2(a), SBA may not accept for negotiation a DoD sole-source 8(a) contract that exceeds $150 million unless DoD has completed a justification in accordance with FAR 6.104 and 206.104-70. The deviation remains in effect until rescinded or incorporated into the FAR, DFARS, and DFARS PGI. Because the $150 million DoD figure derives from the class deviation rather than from this proposed rule, ANCs, Tribes, and NHOs may wish to confirm the operative DoD threshold against Class Deviation 2026-O0037 at the time of any specific DoD award.

Comment considerations. ANCs, Tribes, and NHOs may consider submitting comments on the clarity of the 8(a) sole-source framework in the revised FAR and on whether the DoD $150 million threshold should be incorporated into the FAR or DFARS so that the codified text and the operative rule align.

6. Small Business Marketing Changes

Two parts of the RFO bear directly on how small business opportunities are marketed and made visible, even though neither changes a substantive entitlement.

Continued removal of program-specific references. As we flagged when the Part 5 and Part 26 deviations were released, the Council has continued its practice of replacing references to specific small business programs, the 8(a) Program, HUBZone, women-owned, and service-disabled veteran-owned small business programs, with the generic phrase “small business concerns.” The revised Part 5 retains, as one of the three stated purposes of the part, the objective to “inform small business concerns of contract and subcontract opportunities,” and it preserves set-aside identification on presolicitation notices (total or partial small business set-asides under Part 19 and local-area set-asides under Part 26). While this change does not alter any regulatory requirement, it is indicative of the Council’s choice to reduce the visibility of the socioeconomic programs in the regulatory text. That reduced visibility could, over time, have a negative impact on small businesses by making the programs less prominent and therefore potentially less used.

Publicizing thresholds and the move to Part 12. Under FAR Case 2026-005, Part 5 is retitled “Publicizing Noncommercial Contract Actions,” and all commercial-acquisition publicizing requirements relocate to Part 12. The presolicitation-notice tier is raised from $25,000 to $45,000, and the lower posting tier rises from $15,000 to $20,000. The Council frames these increases as reducing low-dollar clutter on the Governmentwide Point of Entry so that small businesses can more efficiently find relevant opportunities, and the Initial Regulatory Flexibility Analysis describes the net effect on small entities as “minimal and generally neutral to slightly beneficial.”

Public announcement made permissive. A discrete but notable change: the phase-one deviation made the public announcement of awards over $5.5 million mandatory (“Contracting officers must make information available…”), but the phase-two proposed rule converts it to permissive (“Agencies may publicly announce…”). The 8(a) exclusion from public announcement is preserved, as is the small-business right under 15 U.S.C. 637b to request a copy of a solicitation and specifications when an action is not posted to the GPE.

Comment considerations. ANCs, Tribes, and NHOs may consider submitting comments on the continued removal of program-specific references and their potential effects on the visibility and use of the socioeconomic programs, as well as on the conversion of the large-award public-announcement requirement from mandatory to permissive.

7. Protest Changes

The proposed revisions to FAR Part 33 (FAR Case 2026-001) are, on balance, favorable to ANCs and small businesses, because they make the agency-level protest forum — the least expensive and fastest of the three protest fora — more useful.

A new purpose statement. New FAR 33.100 articulates the purpose of the bid protest system for the first time: prompt, fair, and transparent resolution; deterrence of abuse through “clear and substantiated allegations”; and protection of the right to independent review. Two subsections are pointed. Section 33.100(d) states that the protest process is not a vehicle to obtain post-award explanations or debriefings, and Section 33.100(e) states that protests should not be used by incumbent contractors to disrupt transition or induce extensions when there is no reasonable prospect of success. The substantive protest standards, timeliness, and interested-party status, the stay/override framework, do not change, so this is a shift in tone and posture rather than a new bar.

Enhanced agency-level disclosure. The more significant change is practical. For protesters who elect an independent review above the contracting officer, the agency may disclose a redacted copy of the agency’s final technical evaluation of the protester’s proposal and a redacted copy of the source-selection decision, and the protester may raise additional grounds within a reasonable time. The contracting officer must also report protests to the head of the contracting activity. The agency-protest decision target is 35 days, which the Council contrasts with the 100-plus days typical of a GAO protest. For an ANC or small business evaluating whether a debriefing left it with a viable protest, obtaining the evaluation and source-selection decision at the agency level, without the cost of GAO or Court of Federal Claims litigation, could be a meaningful benefit.

GAO streamlining, Disputes clause, and size protests. The proposed rule removes regulatory text that merely repeats the GAO’s bid-protest regulations and instead points to 4 CFR part 21, reducing the risk of discrepancy between the FAR and the GAO rules. Separately, the Council proposes to revise the Disputes clause at 52.233-1 by replacing paragraph (i) with an Alternate I, and it specifically invited comment on whether that change could have unintended consequences for the obligation to continue performance on claims “relating to” a contract. Part 33 confirms that protests of small business size status are not handled under Part 33; they remain at SBA under 13 CFR part 121, so size-status and 8(a)-eligibility challenges are untouched.

Comment considerations. ANCs may consider submitting comments on the new purpose statement (including the incumbent-disruption language at 33.100(e)), on the enhanced agency-level disclosure of the technical evaluation and source-selection decision, and on the proposed Disputes-clause Alternate I, on which the Council has expressly invited comment.

8. The Commercial-Preference Hierarchy in Part 7

What it does. Revised FAR Part 7 (FAR Case 2026-002) absorbs the market-research function formerly housed in Part 10 into Subpart 7.2 and, more significantly, establishes at 7.201(f) a mandatory, ordered commercial-preference hierarchy. Implementing Executive Order 14271 (Ensuring Commercial, Cost-Effective Solutions in Federal Contracts), the hierarchy directs contracting officers, when planning an acquisition, to satisfy the requirement in a defined order of preference: first through commercial products and commercial services available under existing Governmentwide vehicles (Multiple Award Schedule/FSS, GWACs, and best-in-class vehicles); then through other commercial solutions; and only last through custom or non-commercial, open-market approaches. The intent is to maximize the use of the commercial marketplace and to reduce the procurement of custom solutions where a commercial item would meet the need.

Impact on ANCs, Tribes, and NHOs — opportunity and risk. On the opportunity side, an entity-owned subsidiary that holds the relevant Schedule or GWAC positions and offers genuinely commercial products and services is well-positioned to capture work that is now steered preferentially onto those vehicles. On the other side, the hierarchy creates steering pressure that can operate in tension with the sole-source 8(a) authority. A contracting officer who reads 7.201(f) as a directive to exhaust commercial vehicle options first may be less inclined to structure a requirement as an open-market 8(a) sole-source award, even though that authority remains available and is preserved elsewhere in the revised FAR. The hierarchy does not, by its terms, override the socioeconomic set-aside and sole-source authorities, but the practical interaction between “commercial first” and “small business first” is not spelled out.

Comment considerations. ANCs, Tribes, and NHOs may consider submitting comments asking the Council to clarify how the 7.201(f) commercial-preference hierarchy interacts with the small business set-aside requirements of Part 19 and the socioeconomic sole-source authorities, in particular, whether the commercial-preference hierarchy is intended to displace or subordinate the Rule of Two or the 8(a), HUBZone, and small business programs.

Comprehensive Survey of the Remaining Proposed Changes

The eight areas above are the changes we believe most directly affect ANCs, Tribes, NHOs, and small business contractors, and they are the areas on which ANCs, Tribes, and NHOs may wish to focus their attention and any comments.  This section surveys the balance of the proposed changes across the FAR parts that the Council has addressed in the phase-two rules we have reviewed (FAR Cases 2026-001, 2026-002, 2026-005, and 2026-007, together with the standalone Part 49 and Part 50 deviations). Most of these changes are plain-language reorganization or administrative consolidation that do not alter substantive entitlements.

Foundational and Administrative Parts

Part 1 (Federal Acquisition Regulations System). Beyond the four-year sunset discussed above, Part 1 rewrites the FAR’s guiding principles around a “mission first” hierarchy (1.102), adds the Administrator for Federal Procurement Policy to the FAR Council (1.103), streamlines the internal class-deviation approval process (a FAR Council decision within five business days, or 24 hours for urgent requests, with agencies permitted to proceed if they do not hear back), consolidates contracting-officer’s-representative coverage at 1.404, removes the Acquisition 360 voluntary-survey provision (52.201-1), and relocates the FAR’s forms coverage from Part 53 into a new Subpart 1.6. The Council’s own analysis describes Part 1 as primarily an internal Government process that imposes no new direct requirements on contractors.

Part 2 (Definitions). Part 2 is definitional housekeeping. Every socioeconomic definition, i.e., small business concern, 8(a), HUBZone, SDVOSB, WOSB/EDWOSB, small disadvantaged business, and the Small Business Teaming Arrangement construct (including its joint-venture and mentor-protégé forms), is preserved intact in 2.101. The Council redefines the acronym “MAC” from “multi-agency contract” to “multiple-award contract,” updates the “major system” threshold to reflect NDAA FY2026 §1804, removes obsolete terms, relocates single-use terms to the parts where they are used, and creates a new acronym subpart (2.102) hosted online.

Part 4 (Administrative Matters — balance). In addition to the SAM and reps-and-certs changes discussed in Section 1, Part 4 reflects the retirement of FPDS.gov and its transition into SAM Contract Awards Management, and confirms that 52.204-5 (Women-Owned Business (Other Than Small Business)) is retained without change.

Part 52 (Solicitation Provisions and Contract Clauses). Across all of the RFO cases, Part 52 is revised for plain language (replacing “shall” with “must”) and to add commerciality applicability tables that state clearly whether each provision and clause applies to commercial products, commercial services, and COTS items. The Council is also considering relocating and renumbering every provision and clause from the current 52.2 series into a new 52.4 series, and has invited comment on the impact of that change.

Competition, Planning, and Service Contracting

Part 6 (Competition Requirements). Part 6 reorganizes the justification-and-approval provisions (renumbering the postaward content from 6.3 to 6.2) and reflects the higher DoD, NASA, and Coast Guard J&A thresholds enacted by NDAA FY2026 §1804. For ANCs, Tribes, and NHOs, the key point is that the 8(a) sole-source posture is retained and cleaned up at 6.103-5, including the no-J&A exception structure discussed above.

Part 7 (Acquisition Planning — balance). Beyond the commercial-preference hierarchy discussed in Section 8, Part 7 absorbs the market-research function formerly in Part 10 into Subpart 7.2 and continues to house the consolidation and bundling notice requirements that protect small businesses from inappropriately aggregated requirements.

Parts 10 and 18 (Market Research; Emergency Acquisitions). Both standalone parts are removed and reserved. Part 10’s market-research content folds into Part 7, and Part 18’s emergency-acquisition flexibilities are relocated. These are structural moves rather than substantive changes.

Part 37 (Service Contracting). Part 37 consolidates service-contracting coverage, and the inherently-governmental-function analysis moves from former Subpart 7.5 into Subpart 37.3. This matters at the margins for ANC services subsidiaries, because the inherently-governmental determination governs what work may be contracted at all, but the substantive standard is carried forward.

Part 41 (Utility Services). Part 41 is a plain-language rewrite with no socioeconomic-preference impact.

Socio-Economic, Ethics, and Information Parts

Part 26 (Other Socio-Economic Programs). Part 26 is reorganized to follow the acquisition lifecycle. The Indian Incentive Program at Subpart 26.1, which authorizes a 5% incentive payment to a prime contractor on amounts paid to a subcontractor that is an Indian organization or Indian-owned economic enterprise, is preserved because it is statutorily mandated (25 U.S.C. 1544); the implementing clause (52.226-1) is retained, relocated within the part. As we noted when the Part 26 deviation was issued, the Council moved the procedures for challenging an Indian Incentive Program eligibility representation into the FAR Companion Guide rather than retaining them in the regulation. The HBCU and Minority Institution definitions move to 26.401.

Part 3 (Improper Business Practices / Ethics). Part 3 is a near-identical rewrite. The one item of particular note for Indian Country is that the §3.802 anti-lobbying exclusion for Indian tribes and Alaskan Natives is preserved. The Council strengthened the procurement-integrity marking-dispute due-process provisions at 3.104-4 and deleted expired content (the E.O. 11222 reference and the ARRA-related sections).

Part 24 (Privacy and FOIA). Part 24 retains all statutory privacy and FOIA requirements and removes only duplicative or outdated content: the standalone Privacy Training section (24.301) is deleted because the training requirement already lives in clause 52.224-3 (which is retained, with its initial-and-annual, role-based training, documentation, and subcontract-flowdown obligations intact), and 24.102(d) is clarified to confirm that agency civil liability does not reach contractors performing design or development work who do not actually operate a system of records. No new obligations are imposed.

Part 29 (Taxes). Part 29 retains all statutory and treaty-based tax requirements and is otherwise burden-reducing: it removes the defunct Afghanistan tax clauses (52.229-13 and 52.229-14, following the 2021 expiration of the Status of Forces Agreement), clarifies that a Government Purchase or Fleet Card is acceptable evidence to support a state or local tax-exemption claim, and relocates the “State and Local Taxes” definition from Part 2 to Subpart 29.3. The Council’s analysis describes the net effect on small entities as positive.

Part 39 (Information and Communication Technology). Part 39 is retitled from “Information Technology” to “Information and Communication Technology (ICT)” to set the framework for future technology rulemaking. It deletes the standalone Privacy section (39.105) and clause 52.239-1 as inconsistently used and redundant. It consolidates two previously pending FAR cases: the NICE Cybersecurity Workforce Framework (which adds a new expectation that contractors ensure IT-support and cybersecurity-support deliverables conform to the NICE taxonomy when specified) and a Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) services acquisition-planning step. The small-business-friendly rule at 39.103, that IT-services solicitations should not impose minimum personnel experience or education requirements absent a documented need is preserved.

Part 40 (Information Security and Supply Chain). Part 40 is the consolidation home for the Government’s security prohibitions and exclusions, pulling together requirements previously scattered across Parts 4 and 25: the Section 889 telecommunications prohibition, Kaspersky, the ByteDance/TikTok prohibition, the FASCSA supply-chain orders, the covered-drone prohibition, and the Sudan and Iran restrictions. It collapses five provisions into one (52.240-2) and seven clauses into one (52.240-3), establishes a single “do-not-buy” list, and adopts a single reasonable-inquiry standard that confirms an offeror need not conduct an internal or third-party audit, with a harmonized 72-hour reporting timeline. It also implements the Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) program (a new SF XXX form and alignment to NIST SP 800-171 Revision 3).

Terminations and Extraordinary Actions

Part 49 (Terminations — balance). Beyond the compressed settlement timeline and the permissive audit discussed in Section 2, the Part 49 changes confirm that commercial-item (Part 12) contracts are excluded from the Part 49 settlement framework (49.002(a)(2)), and they preserve the small-business protections that matter most: priority handling of small business terminations (49.101) and the SBA-notice safeguards on default terminations (49.402-3).

Part 50 (Extraordinary Contractual Actions and the SAFETY Act). Part 50 is, at this stage, a deviation-only plain-language rewrite.  There is no phase-two proposed rule for it yet. It preserves intact both the Public Law 85-804 indemnification framework (including the delegation and congressional-notification thresholds and the authority to indemnify unusually hazardous or nuclear risks) and the SAFETY Act liability protections for anti-terrorism technologies. Its relevance to most ANC clients is limited to the narrow case of an ANC subsidiary performing defense or homeland-security work involving catastrophic-risk indemnification or an anti-terrorism technology.

Summary Table of Proposed Changes

Conclusion: How and When to Submit Comments

The Revolutionary FAR Overhaul is being implemented through a combination of class deviations (operative now) and phase-two proposed rules (open for comment). The proposed rules remain open for public comment, and ANCs, Tribes, NHOs, and small business contractors may consider submitting comments.

Deadline. Comments on the phase-two proposed rules discussed here are due 30 days after Federal Register publication. For the rules published on June 23, 2026, comments are due on or about July 23, 2026.

How to comment. Comments are submitted electronically through the Federal eRulemaking Portal at regulations.gov. Submitters should cite the applicable FAR Case number in all correspondence and on any attached document, and should include the commenter’s name and organization. The relevant cases discussed in this update are:

• FAR Case 2026-001 — Parts 1, 2, 4, 33, 39, 40, 52, 53 (SAM/reps-and-certs; protests; the four-year sunset; civilian 8(a) framework).
• FAR Case 2026-002 — Parts 6, 7, 10, 18, 26, 37, 41, 52 (the Part 7 commercial-preference hierarchy; consolidation; Indian Incentive Program).
• FAR Case 2026-005 — Parts 5, 24, 29, 52 (publicizing thresholds and the mandatory-to-permissive public-announcement change).

To preserve a separate record on the impact to small entities, the Council also accepts comments under 5 U.S.C. 610 on the existing regulations affected by each rule; such comments must be submitted separately and should cite “5 U.S.C. 610” together with the applicable FAR Case number.

This article summarizes aspects of the law and contains opinions that are solely those of the authors. This article does not constitute legal advice. For legal advice regarding your situation, you should contact an attorney.