(a) The Social Security Acquisition Regulation (SSAR) is issued to establish uniform acquisition policies and procedures for the Social Security Administration (SSA) which conform to the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) System.

(b) The SSAR implements and supplements the FAR. (Implementing material expands upon or indicates the manner of compliance with related FAR material. Supplementing material refers to policies or procedures which have no corresponding counterpart in the FAR.)

(c) The SSAR contains only formal agency policies and procedures which have a significant effect beyond SSA's internal operating procedures or which have a significant cost or administrative impact on contractors or offerors.

The SSAR is prescribed under the authority of 5 U.S.C. 301 and section 205(c) of the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949, as amended (40 U.S.C. 486(c)).

The FAR and SSAR apply to all SSA acquisitions as stated in FAR 1.104. Unless specified otherwise, the FAR and SSAR apply to acquisitions within and outside the United States.

(a) The SSAR is also published in the same forms as indicated in FAR 1.105-1(a).

(b) The SSAR is issued in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) as Chapter 23 of Title 48, Social Security Acquisition Regulation (SSAR). It may be referenced as “48 CFR chapter 23.”

(a) General. The SSAR conforms to the FAR with respect to divisional arrangements; i.e., subchapters, parts, subparts, sections, subsections, and paragraphs.

(b) Numbering. The FAR System of numbering permits the keying of the same or similar subject matter throughout Chapters 1 (FAR) and 23 (SSAR) of Title 48, CFR. However, SSA's system varies somewhat from that of the FAR numbering scheme, in the numbering to the left of the decimal point. Whereas the FAR only identifies the part number of 48 CFR to the left of the decimal point, our corresponding reference identifies the chapter as well. For example, the FAR paragraph corresponding to this SSAR paragraph is numbered 1.105-2(b) where “1” is the part number (may be one or two digits and is followed by a decimal point), “1” (to the right of the decimal point) is the subpart number, “05” (always two digits) is the section number, “2” is the subsection number (always hyphenated), and “(b)” is the paragraph reference. This SSAR reference is 2301.105-2(b) where the “23” is the chapter number assigned to SSA and the “01” represents the part number (part numbers will always be two digits for agencies implementing the FAR). The remaining numbers to the right of the decimal point are identical to and reflect the same divisions as in the FAR numbering scheme.

(c) References and citations. (1) Unless otherwise stated, references indicate parts, subparts, sections, subsections, etc., of this regulation, the SSAR.

(2) This regulation shall be referred to as the Social Security Acquisition Regulation (SSAR). Any reference may be cited as “SSAR” followed by the appropriate number. Within the SSAR, the number alone will be used.

(3) Citations of authority shall be incorporated where necessary. All FAR reference numbers shall be preceded by “FAR.”