Fiscal Year 2019 FAR Reissue

GSA (General Services Administration) has reissued the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) as the FY (fiscal year) 2019 version. The previous reissue was in fiscal year 2005 and since then, has been amended 101 times - FAC (Federal Acquisition Circular) 2005-01 through 2005-101.

Periodically the FAR is reissued because of administrative necessity. Although reissues do not alter the language of the FAR, they do contain administrative updates to improve the user experience (its hard to type that with a straight face) and increase accessibility.

A few notes about the reissue.

• Future Federal Acquisition Circulars (FAC) will be renumbered so that the next issued FAC will be FAC 2019-01. This reissue will replace the prior numbering system which used FACs 2--5-01 through FAC 2005-101. Because of the reniumbering, the Foreword section of the FAR will be updated to reflect the current FAC number.
• The FAR looseleaf package will no longer be offered. Instead, a list of sections affected by each FAC will be included on the FAR website.
• The matrix will continue to be available in the PdF version of the FAR. However, the FAR website is promising to release a new "smart matrix" which will include a filterable clause matris, file saving options, improved search capabilities, as well as hyperlinked clauses, provisions and prescriptions to the current version of FAR.
• The FAR will be available in a number of formats including HTML, XML, Word, and PDF.
• FAR proposed rule publications that are open for comments are available at https://acquisition.gov/requesting_comments.
• The Federal Alert Notices (FAN) are available at https://acquisition.gov/fan_list. FANs were established by the Office of Federal Procurement POlicy (OFPP) in 2012 to help improve awareness of the regulatory changes.

Don't forget that there is a mobile version of FAR as well making it accessible on all devices (including smart phones). Instructions for downloading FAR to your device of choice can be found here.