Federal region

  In a Presidential directive issued in 1969, various Federal agencies (among them the currently designated Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Labor, the Office of Economic Opportunity, and the Small Business Administration) were instructed to adopt a uniform field system of 10 geographic regions with common boundaries and headquarters cities. The action was taken to correct the evolution of fragmented Federal field organization structures that each agency or component created independently, usually with little reference to other agencies' arrangements. Most Federal domestic agencies or their components have completed realignments and relocations to conform to the Standard Federal Administration Regions (SFARs).

  U.S. Dept. of Energy, Energy Information Administration's Energy Glossary