Several leaders from the GSA, the General Services Administration in the U.S., presented yesterday on what's being described as the most comprehensive overhaul of federal procurement regulations in 40 years. As you may therefore expect, it's a topic of a lot of interest, and they started the call by saying that over 8,000 people had signed up for the webinar briefing that happened yesterday. if you weren't among them, here's the top seven things that you should know that they said are underway. So first is an overall procurement consolidation under Executive Order 14240, in which the GSA is designated as the single quote-unquote federal wallet for 10 common spend categories. So in an effort to curb duplicative contracting across government. That executive order directs all agencies to channel routine purchases ranging from office supplies to professional services through GSA's centralized vehicles. The GSA will oversee six of those categories while agencies like DOD and DHS retain leadership in some of the remainder. Second, the GSA was named executive agent for IT acquisitions, and GSA assumes authority over all civilian IT GWACs and IDIQs. Almost all of you probably know that an IDIQ is an indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity, which refers to an open master contract. GWAC is a little bit more federal, and that's government-wide acquisition contract with similar functions. So from their presentation, the White House has ordered OMB to appoint GSA as the government-wide executive agent for IT. Under that order, major contract vehicles that may have been initiated by agencies will be rationalized and managed by GSA. Third, the federal acquisition regulations, or FAR as obviously commonly known, is underway with overhaul that was mandated by Executive Order 14275. In addition to formal rulemaking, they've initiated rapid skinny quote-unquote deviations preceding the formal FAR rewrite and the notice and comment rulemaking. So what does that mean? The FAR Council has begun issuing expedited class deviations to strip out non-statutory text with a full plain language rewrite to follow through traditional rulemaking channels. So fourth, we'll dig into some of the immediate class deviations. There is revised FAR language already in force at the GSA contracting offices. The first FAR deviation is in Part 1, which I'll describe next, which means that contracting offices are applying these new streamlined rules today, well ahead of the formal FAR rewrites completion. Additional parts are slated for rapid deviation in the coming weeks. So sixth, let's go into the guiding principle changes in FAR Part 1. There's established now five core principles, as well as a four-year sunset for non-statutory rules. So the new FAR text highlights goals and principles that will guide this overhaul, highlighting items like mission first, value of time, commercial solutions, and merit-based awards. And importantly, any regulation not required by statute will automatically sunset four years after implementation unless actively renewed. So the sixth major topic was strategic acquisition guidance, SAG, playbooks. This is a goal to create practitioner-focused guides that replace a lot of the old FAR narrative. Through this effort, many parts of the FAR that are not regulatory but provide narrative playbooks will be removed and a lot of what that was seeking to provide, which was assistance to contracting officers in specific procurement categories. These strategic acquisition guideline playbooks will be on acquisition.gov and it'll cover a lot of the same topics on various and sundry procurement categories. And the final major topic was engagement and stakeholder involvement opportunities. So informal feedback will be solicited and garnered through September 30th. And acquisition.gov, especially the overhaul pages, will be a primary information hub. So stakeholders can track the overall process in that link, which I'll provide in the content, where each far part features red lines, explanatory videos, and a feedback widget. And informal comments will be accepted through September 30th before the formal notice and comment period begins. And they already have one example practitioner album up to show the tone and style, and it's pretty interesting. So even if you're not in federal procurement, there's a lot about this to stay aware of and participate in. State and local is affected by FAR regulations on the use of federal money. So it may very well change aspects and requirements of procurement under these regulations. And many political subdivisions base their procurement regulations, at least in part, on the FAR. So for any public procurement practitioner, this is something that should be paid attention to, regardless of your level of government.