Tracye Winfrey Howard

WHAT: President Trump issued two new Executive Orders (EOs) on April 15 and April 16, 2025, focused on federal procurement streamlining. The April 15 EO, entitled “Restoring Common Sense to Federal Procurement,” is intended to “create the most agile, effective, and efficient procurement system possible” by revising the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) to ensure that it contains “only provisions required by statute or essential to sound procurement.” The April 16 EO, entitled “Ensuring Commercial, Cost Effective Solutions in Federal Contracts,” is aimed at ensuring that agencies procure commercial products and services to the maximum extent possible and calls for a wholesale review of pending or planned acquisitions.

WHAT: The Trump Administration issued an Executive Order (EO) to kick off a “comprehensive overhaul” of the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) acquisition system, aiming to “rapidly reform” acquisition processes with an emphasis on “speed, flexibility, and execution” as a means of accelerating procurement and revitalizing the defense industrial base. The EO also calls for modernization of the “duties and composition of the defense acquisition workforce” by incentivizing and rewarding “risk-taking and innovation from these personnel.” Entitled “Modernizing Defense Acquisitions and Spurring Innovation in the Defense Industrial Base,” the EO outlines actions to reform the acquisition process and workforce; review internal regulations; and review major defense acquisition programs.

WHAT: FedRAMP has announced that it will be working on a new framework for authorization and assessment of cloud services for federal consumption, calling the initiative “FedRAMP 20X” (announcement here). In response to concerns from cloud service providers (CSPs) and other stakeholders that the existing FedRAMP process is too expensive, time-consuming, and challenging, FedRAMP 20X aims to improve the efficiency of the FedRAMP process by “transitioning away from costly, inefficient, manually compiled documentation and towards industry-led, data-driven security reporting

WHAT: Department of Defense (DOD) Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a memorandum titled “Directing Modern Software Acquisition to Maximize Lethality” that is intended to reform DOD’s procurement involving software development.

WHAT: The Trump Administration’s ongoing effort to rein in government spending continues with the issuance of an Executive Order (EO) aimed at consolidating federal procurement authority in the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA).