The FAR overhaul rewrote the rules, but now comes the hard part

The Revolutionary FAR Overhaul's goal was to strip down the government's acquisition regulations to their bare essentials and create a framework designed for flexibility and speed.

While changing the rules is one thing, breaking decades of risk avoidance and compliance is something else entirely.

Hundreds of pages were cut from the Federal Acquisition Regulation in that overhaul effort. But it will take time to change the mindsets of contracting officers and other acquisition officials across government, panelists said at the Feb. 18 Fed Tech Priorities summit produced by Washington Technology’s parent company GovExec Media.

Tim Cooke, CEO of ASI Government, said it is important to understand how the FAR got so big in the first place before looking at whether it can succeed.

“Something bad happens and something new comes into the FAR. Thousands of pages of stuff,” Cooke said.

“I don’t know if I’d characterize it as bad, but something happened that they didn’t want to happen, so they wrote a regulation about it,” said Stephanie Kostro, president of the Professional Services Council, a trade group representing GovCon companies.

The result is a system that punishes bad decisions instead of rewarding good ones, Kostro said.

Cooke agreed and added that General Services Administration’s focus on training for contracting officers will only go so far.

“Training is needed but as an economist, most of the answer to me is incentives because most people will follow the incentives,” he said.

“Understanding what would incentivize evaluation teams, contracting officers, acquisition professionals writ large, and setting the system up for success is so how you go about changing behavior,” Kostro said.

Training and incentives have to work together, she said.

“The need for training is paramount and training not just for contracting officers but for every type of acquisition professional and that includes in industry,” Kostro said.

Training has to include an understanding of what the incentives are, she added.

The past year was about efficiency and that included streamlining the FAR. But 2026 will be about innovation, Kostro said.

“Innovation is going to be the tagline going forward, and cost efficiency is part of that. Instead of having the biggest bang for the buck, it's about what is the bang you want for the least amount of bucks,” Kostro said.

One big change Cooke wants to see is a shift in contracts from using statements of work to using statements of objectives.

Statements of work are the traditional way of telling potential bidders what an agency wants done. But according to Cooke, statements of objectives focuses on missions and outcomes and leaves it to the contractor to find the best way to get there.

That might be a challenge for agencies where officials are used to having control, he said.

“I want this many people who know this stuff to be working on my job as opposed to, I would like this outcome,” Cooke said.

Change in the acquisition world has been fast and furious over the last year. Cooke and Kostro said that pace needs to continue as both see the government as having a limited window to make longer-term changes.

“This is about trying to get to a place where people have changed the way they think about the problem. The compliance mindset has to change,” Cooke said.

Kostro predicted that the government has a two-year window to institute change, given the overhaul effort started in April 2025.

“Cultural or behavioral changes are the hardest kind of change and you’re never certain that it stuck,” she said.

Congress does not always help matters. Kostro pointed out that while GSA was stripping out FAR pages, the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act added several more mandates that need to be added to the FAR.

Part of the cultural change is understanding that the job is never done, Cooke said.

“The world changes every day and you’re always trying to keep up with it as a buyer,” he said.