I worked with a federal government agency for a short relatively short amount of time—up until recently. I feel like I went to Catholic School and quickly learned to hate myself (Some Catholics might understand that reference).

I am proud of the work I was able to accomplish. Yet it was slow. I would estimate I accomplished half of what I was capable of accomplishing. Both people and institution stood in my —and others — way.

I have to admit I received plenty of expressions of “surprise,” when I did help get things done. It was a huge turn-off.

Of course, I had to deal with a ton of B.S and I am used to BS having working in large institutions. Yet it was an astoundingly tall heap of BS that seemed unnecessary— and it became very much part of the culture.

Things weren’t working well. It WAS culture. None of what I describe is an endorsement of what is happening now: changes that are without transparency and at a clip that is mind-boggling.

Beyond confounding, the current changes are rolled out with displays of “mockery” that makes me feel uneasy. Those statements seem short term, makes me question the motivation behind these changes. The daily public statements feel personal and uncivil.

All said, the judicial branch seems like a competent and functional branch right. It still recruits our our brightest and best. State Department, DoD and others have exemplary people working for them. Others indeed need to be cut.

I am concerned. But I’m not upset about overhauling the FAR and anything OP has outlined here.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The FAR is a huge pain for both the government and contractors, and complying drives acquisition costs and schedules. It does serve to make a level playing field among bidders, and very few Federal contract selections are overturned after the fact. My guess is that, once again, the Administration will take a decent idea (streamlining acquisitions) and screw it up by moving too fast. Coincidentally the main beneficiaries will somehow turn out to be Trump campaign donors. Just a hunch.

Elon Musk has no idea how the government works, or why. He just thinks it's bad. Trump has no more ideas about anything anymore.

There are good ideas but implementing them is difficult, do this administration is just taking the easy path of canceling everything, firing everyone, (pardoning all of the J6ers rather than examining each case), etc.

Will they do this the right way? We can hope, but they haven't done anything else the right way, yet, so it's hard to hope that this time will be different.

This. The FAR super sucks. But writing it to basically say “anything Elon likes gets a first right if refusal” isn’t a great fix.

And anything done in a great hurry and outside the established process is also rarely done well.

Anonymous wrote:The FAR is a huge pain for both the government and contractors, and complying drives acquisition costs and schedules. It does serve to make a level playing field among bidders, and very few Federal contract selections are overturned after the fact. My guess is that, once again, the Administration will take a decent idea (streamlining acquisitions) and screw it up by moving too fast. Coincidentally the main beneficiaries will somehow turn out to be Trump campaign donors. Just a hunch.

Elon Musk has no idea how the government works, or why. He just thinks it's bad. Trump has no more ideas about anything anymore.

There are good ideas but implementing them is difficult, do this administration is just taking the easy path of canceling everything, firing everyone, (pardoning all of the J6ers rather than examining each case), etc.

Will they do this the right way? We can hope, but they haven't done anything else the right way, yet, so it's hard to hope that this time will be different.

It is far too complex of a regulation. A LOT of vendors abuse it by launching protests that are frivolous. Plus there are all these incredibly stupid and arcane rules for source selection and publicizing requirements. What would take a private company a week to buy 500 laptops could take an agency up to 3 months. The FAR should be no more than 30 pages in length plus NO agency supplements should be allowed.

Streamline it asap!!!!

Anonymous wrote:The FAR is a huge pain for both the government and contractors, and complying drives acquisition costs and schedules. It does serve to make a level playing field among bidders, and very few Federal contract selections are overturned after the fact. My guess is that, once again, the Administration will take a decent idea (streamlining acquisitions) and screw it up by moving too fast. Coincidentally the main beneficiaries will somehow turn out to be Trump campaign donors. Just a hunch.

The FAR is what it is because of layers of new regs that kept getting added due to layers of new kinds of fraud, waste and abuse being committed by suppliers and contractors.

I certainly hope they have some people who actually have deep subject matter expertise involved in rewriting it, otherwise it just opens the door to a whole bunch of fraud, waste and abuse.

Anonymous wrote:The FAR is a huge pain for both the government and contractors, and complying drives acquisition costs and schedules. It does serve to make a level playing field among bidders, and very few Federal contract selections are overturned after the fact. My guess is that, once again, the Administration will take a decent idea (streamlining acquisitions) and screw it up by moving too fast. Coincidentally the main beneficiaries will somehow turn out to be Trump campaign donors. Just a hunch.

They will out completely incompetent people in charge of it, as with everything else.

The FAR is a huge pain for both the government and contractors, and complying drives acquisition costs and schedules. It does serve to make a level playing field among bidders, and very few Federal contract selections are overturned after the fact. My guess is that, once again, the Administration will take a decent idea (streamlining acquisitions) and screw it up by moving too fast. Coincidentally the main beneficiaries will somehow turn out to be Trump campaign donors. Just a hunch.

In plain terms the FAR are the inherent rules for the government to buy…..anything.

When the government buys something, whether it is a wrench or billion dollar ship or services the FAR has thousands of rules the government either complies with (to make things fair for people bidding on government contracts) or selectively enforces to cancel contracts after being awarded.

There is some ridiculous powers that can turn any contract officer in their own version of FBI demanding records and cell phone data/etc under certain provisions.

Even if that contract officer works for say EPA - they have these provisions to turn into investigator, jury and judge.

It is really messed up.

Anonymous wrote:OP, I'm not a fed. Can you explain the implications of these changes?

The FAR is the primary regulation used by most (not all) agencies to buy good and services. I’m not talking about just office furniture and staplers, folks. I am talking about the main guide for the procurement of major platforms, weapons systems, complex staffing needs and so on. This is a huge development…plus the fact that GSA is now going to be buying pretty much all civilian goods and services very soon. Lots of 1102s are gonna get RIf’d- thousands.

Orgs that receive federal funding know what the FAR is.

I’m a fed and I’ve never heard of FAR. But if it’s old and archaic, maybe it needs revision.

Ahhhh "Archaic and Messy", your words. Lets keep it , sounds amazing!

We'll see. This is what many people want to be changed. But there are doubts that these are the people who are able to do it properly.

OP, I'm not a fed. Can you explain the implications of these changes?

I know most people reading and posting here are more interested in the red meat issues going on in the political arena. One that is underway that is well underneath the radar is OMB’s effort to rewrite the Federal Acquisition Regulation.

So, if you are a fed, chances are you’ve dealt with the FAR at some point t or another either directly or indirectly. It is archaic and messy at times, but it’s what we have to use when purchasing hundreds of billions of dollars of good and services.

So, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is rewriting the FAR and has excluded GSA, the Civilian Agency Acquisition Council, and the Defense Acquisition Regulations Council from the process.

Apparently, no new language is going to be added. Instead, they are going to "line out" all text that is not required by statute. They may also line out text that is related to a statute but not essential to implementing the statute. Text based on executive orders will be lined out, since it is not based on statute. They are doing research into the sources of existing text. The prospective new text is being referred to as FAR 2.0.

They are planning to move fast and complete the project in weeks, not months. It appears they are going to bypass the normal notice and comment