Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR)
The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) is the governmentwide regulation establishing uniform policies and procedures for acquisition by executive agencies, codified at 48 CFR Chapter 1 and issued jointly by the Secretary of Defense and the Administrators of GSA and NASA.
The FAR sits at the top of the FAR System, which couples the governmentwide regulation with the agency supplements that implement or add to it — the DFARS for defense, and civilian-agency counterparts. FAR 1.103 names the issuing authorities: the Secretary of Defense, the Administrator of General Services, and the NASA Administrator prepare, issue, and maintain it jointly under 41 U.S.C. chapter 13.
The regulation reaches contractors through Part 52, which holds the solicitation provisions and contract clauses the policy parts prescribe. What a contractor must actually do lives in the clause set of the signed contract, so reviews start with the clause list, not the policy text.
The working hazard now is version control. Since the overhaul began in 2025, the text that applies for many parts is an agency class deviation adopting model deviation language rather than the codified CFR, and a citation to legacy section numbers can point at text that no longer governs your agency.
Regulatory Reference
48 CFR chapter 1; FAR 1.101; FAR 1.103
RFO Status
The FAR is the object of the overhaul itself: E.O. 14275 (April 2025) ordered the rewrite, agencies adopted model deviation text part by part through 2025, and formal proposed rules began publishing June 23, 2026.
Category
Regulations & Policy
How AcqBot Helps
AcqBot resolves every citation against the text that governs your agency right now — codified FAR, RFO model deviation, or agency class deviation — so documents cite operative language instead of superseded section numbers.
Related glossary entries
Class Deviation
A class deviation authorizes an agency to depart from specific FAR or supplement provisions for a category of contract actions rather than a single case — the mechanism agencies are using to implement the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul ahead of formal rulemaking.
Commercial Products and Services (FAR Part 12)
Commercial products and commercial services are items of a type sold, leased, licensed, or offered in the commercial marketplace, defined at FAR 2.101. FAR Part 12 implements the statutory preference for buying them whenever market research shows they can meet the agency's need.
Rule of Two
The rule of two directs a contracting officer to set aside an acquisition for small business when there is a reasonable expectation of receiving offers from at least two responsible small business concerns and making award at fair market prices, per FAR 19.502-2.
Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI)
Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) is information the government creates or possesses, or that an entity handles on its behalf, that a law, regulation, or governmentwide policy requires safeguarding or dissemination controls for — sensitive but not classified, governed by 32 CFR Part 2002.