The Anti-Assignment Act (41 U.S.C. § 6305) prohibits the transfer of a government contract or interest in a government contract to a third party. However, government agencies recognized that contractors are on occasion bought, sold, merged, or simply encounter circumstances upon which it becomes desirable or necessary for them to assign a government contract to a third party.  

To address this issue, the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) provides for a novation process to give contractors a method to transfer government contracts and not run afoul of the prohibitions in the Anti-Assignment Act. The ultimate goal of the novation process is to successfully transfer the contract and have the government recognize a new contractor as the successor-in-interest to the transferred contract.