One click, 3,800 contracts: Unison automates FAR deviation mods at scale

Agencies are working to implement the deviations and other changes to the Federal Acquisition Regulation and in doing so, they face the daunting task of modifying literally thousands of contracts.

It would be nice if there was a Staples-like “Easy button” that contracting officers could hit. But maybe there is.

Unison, a provider of acquisition and contract writing tools, announced earlier this month that it helped an unnamed federal agency issue more than 3,800 contract modifications by using the company's bulk modification tool.

It took just moments to accomplish would have taken weeks as thousands of individual contract actions needed to be drafted.

“Federal acquisition teams are being asked to respond quickly to new guidance while managing increasingly complex contracts,” Unison CEO Reid Jackson said in a release.

Unison began incorporating the deviations into its tool as soon as the government began issuing the deviations as part of the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul, which started in April 2025.

“We’ve always helped our agencies work with the FAR so they can make releases that stay compliant,” Greg Young, vice president of delivery services at Unison, told Washington Technology. “Now we are working with them on the RFO.”

The size and scale of the RFO raises some new questions – How are deviations made and when are they made? How will deviations be delivered differently at different agencies?

Different agencies have been approaching deviations differently. For example, some are issuing deviations for different parts at different times.

But this agency has a lot of indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity vehicles and Multiple Award Schedule contracts, so it decided against taking a piecemeal approach.

“They wanted to do mass mods at the IDV level so that future deliver orders would incorporate all the RFO deviations,” Young said.

Unison’s bulk tool uses automation and workflow tools that create the document, the record that goes out to the Federal Procurement Data System. The tools send the document out for signature via DocuSign.

“For the folks that are executing the bulk mod, it's a little bit of a setup and then one click of a button and seamlessly it's creating those mods,” said John Bria, technical project manager for Unison.

In the case of this agency, it needed 3,800 modifications at once.

The DocuSign signatures are bilateral meaning that the contracting and the contracting officer need to sign off on the modifications. The contractor also has to flow the changes down through its subcontractors.

Despite the size of the mass deviation, this was not an extra task order for Unison.

“Most of our customers use our FedRAMP SaaS solution, so its part of their annual subscription for our tools and solutions,” Young said.

Young said that Unison works with about 70% of civilian agencies and he expects the modification tool to get heavier use. That is because more deviations will need to be made as the General Services Administration and Office of Management and Budget release the final rules in phase two of the RFO.

“If the final rules are just slightly different than the deviations, then there is the need for additional modifications to go out,” Young said.