Interview transcript:
Terry Gerton Let’s just start at the beginning. You have had such an amazing career in the federal government. What first drew you to that kind of work, and specifically, how did you get into procurement?
Karla Smith Jackson Interesting story, I actually started in college as a fashion merchandising major and was interested in buying. And the year I graduated, we were in a recession. It was the first Bush, George H.W. Bush, and I had to take a look around. Because of the recession, some of my job offers were withdrawn. And my dad was a military officer, retired military officer. And I wanted to give service back to the country. That was very natural to me. And I saw that this was a career. It was buying, not clothes, but weapon systems. And I always enjoyed the military and it was a natural inclination to do buying. And then doing it for the United States military was just a perfect fit for me. So I got to actually buy for the United States government.
Terry Gerton So you started in DoD.
Karla Smith Jackson I certainly did, with what was then the Defense Nuclear Agency.
Terry Gerton And what were you buying in the Defense Nuclear Agency?
Karla Smith Jackson Really interesting time, it was just after Desert Storm and there was a peace dividend. If you guys, if folks remember, the wall had just fallen down in Germany and whatnot. And so what we were actually buying was a lot of technology and a lot of research that was done after the Cold War. So things like nuclear weapons effects and we were doing some above-ground nuclear testing. A lot of things that the former Soviet Union had done, researched the things that we didn’t do in the United States. So I did a lot negotiating with what were the former, you would call them, nuclear states in the former Soviet Union. And so it started in R&D and testing information and reports, those kinds of things.
Terry Gerton And so as you progressed, what would you describe as the most transformative or impactful career positions that you held?
Karla Smith Jackson I’ve had a couple of really interesting positions, like I said, starting there with that peace dividend at the end of Desert Storm and actually working internationally early in my career, working with NATO procurements and working with the former Soviet Union, getting a chance to travel to Russia and to Kazakhstan and seeing some of those former nuclear states. And actually looking at ways to take those military officers that no longer had a mission, and then we’re talking about the early 90s to mid 90s, and transfer them into career fields that were non-military. Taking skills like optics and teaching them how to, instead of building weapons, maybe learning how to actually make contact lenses, or factories that they were building, and they turned into bottling for Coke bottles or for software bottles. And then teaching them skills, even some construction skills and that kind of things, they were militaristic types of skills. And then we, if you remember the Nunn-Lugar, that funding was provided by Congress, and I had a lot of those contracts for those. The other things that I think were pretty revolutionary at that time, I got to work on what was the Strategic Defense Initiative. That was actually in the 80s. I worked on some early research and development programs there for SDIO. And that led me to my second part of my early career, which was going to what is now Missile Defense Agency. And I worked on a lot of projects, early launch services contracts and R&D contracts to make missile defense a reality. That led to what, when you say Desert Storm and you start to talk about some of the Scuds and things and those early interactions that we had with Iraq, the Patriot missiles and those kinds of things, I worked on a lot of those research projects and transferred from Defense Nuclear Agency, it became Defense Threat Reduction Agency now, to Ballistic Missile Defense Agency, and it’s now Missile Defense Agency, and worked on a lot of those really early research and development projects that led to the THAAD program now, people know now Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and some of the projects that now defend Israel, that are the predecessors to what will be Golden Dome now. So the work that I did in the early 90s in the R&D, and what we used to say making missile defense a reality, has led to the things that are going on right now. For me, it makes me very proud that a lot of that early contracting work that I did is leading right to the things that are being done today.
Terry Gerton You’ve got such a historical perspective there. And now you’re finishing out your career at NASA.
Karla Smith Jackson Yes.
Terry Gerton Obviously, thinking about things that are launched isn’t a logical tie in there. But what makes the NASA procurement environment so unique?
Karla Smith Jackson Well, for me, transitioning from that military-slash-intelligence world to NASA was just a natural — because I had the launch services, but they were mostly missiles and satellites, so it was unmanned — going to manned flight and coming to NASA, what we call this age of Artemis, the Artemis generation, and this is what we called the second golden age of spaceflight, being at NASA at the time, I awarded the first, under my watch, Human Landing System, working with the Boeing Corporation for the Space Launch System. And then being there in November 2022 for the Artemis I launch and seeing that culminate, and it was just a huge, huge milestone for NASA. And then we’re leading up to the Artemis II launch, which will occur in February 2026. And to be able to see the first man and woman of color, hopefully, get into orbit would be just an amazing kind of accomplishment. So there were a number of very significant procurements under my watch that I was able to get awarded. I mentioned Human Landing System, but there were others like the spacesuits, the Extravehicular Activity System. Instead of buying spacesuits as a piece of hardware, we actually lease spacesuits now. We buy them as a service. That was transformational to be able to buy those in a commercial environment as a service, as opposed to buying the actual hardware and maintaining them. We’ve bought, under my tenure, our lunar terrestrial vehicles, our Lunar Terrain Vehicles, moon buggies. We have three potential offers, so we’re able to maintain competition and we’re leasing those vehicles as well. So where we want to have a continuous or sustained presence on the moon, there’ll be other opportunities to have an autonomous Lunar Terrain Vehicle on the Moon doing experiments when we’re not physically there as humans on the Moon. And so there’s any number of things with this new Artemis program that I’ve been able to work with. And then I’ll say the last thing that I have been able to be really, really involved with is what we call the ISS, International Space Station, de-orbiting vehicle. We put together a solicitation where we allowed industry to propose their own contract type, as opposed to the government telling them this is the contract type, and let them propose the risk posture that they best believed they could de-orbit that vehicle. We’ve never de-orbited an International Space Station, so it’s first of its kind, and I’m very proud about having done that.
Terry Gerton These are fascinating accomplishments. And under your tenure, so much has changed at NASA. It awards, I think, 80% of its budget on procurement. And of course, NASA used to be the only launch agency. And now the launch industry has been so commercialized. How has that changed how NASA operates and what you’ve seen?
Karla Smith Jackson Well, if you look at the percentage of launch work that NASA actually pays for, it’s some small fraction, like small single-digit percentages. Most of the launch services that happen commercially are in either the DoD or intelligence area, and then the wider commercial or space tourism. So what NASA did, starting in the 1990s, was transform the way that we procure launch services in order to bring down the cost of launch. And we did, as an agency in the 90s and early 2000s, when we did sunset what we had as a space shuttle, we offered the infrastructure that was available at NASA to other companies, like a SpaceX or a Blue Origin or whatnot. So they launched there on our facilities, and then we offer that at a discount. By bringing down or allowing them to use those particular facilities, we maintain those skills and our ability to launch at a cheaper cost. They were able to use a lot of our folks on site to be able to assist them with that. So by doing that, NASA maintains what we consider a critical capability for the nation in civil space. Also, by doing that, we’re able to do the research that we need, and we’re able to offer, I would say from a global perspective, our allies opportunities to launch into space to basically further human exploration and further science with respect to human exploration.
Terry Gerton So, Karla, let’s transition from NASA-specific to acquisition more broadly.
Karla Smith Jackson Yes.
Terry Gerton As you prepare to retire, what’s your perspective on the current acquisition environment, both its strengths and its challenges? There’s a lot of changes in the works.
Karla Smith Jackson Yeah, there’s a lot of change in the works. And I look at it as a huge opportunity. As I, I’ll say, sunset from federal acquisition, I’m going to stay in the acquisition game, but on the industry side. And as we’re looking at regulations and looking at rewriting the FAR, as a member of the FAR Council, as a principal, we’re going to streamline how we operate in the acquisition world. We’re going to reduce the size of our acquisition regulations. We’re going to allow ingenuity on the part of our contracting officers, more autonomy, more flexibility. We’re going to leverage commercial application, like we talked about launch services earlier. We’re going to take some of those same, I’ll say, engineering skills and commerciality and use that on the business side. So that’s the opportunity that’s going to exist. Now, the challenge that’s the converse of the opportunity is that we have to make sure that we hire the right people. People that have the right critical thinking and the people that have the right business acumen to be able to operate without a defined set of rules. Instead of telling people how to, we’re going to give people a guidebook that allows them to operate not in a box, but with a box. So they know what their authority is and what they have to consider as they make decisions, be it contract type, be it what are the terms and conditions, what are the trades, whether it’s a contract, whether it’s a grant, a cooperative agreement, or another transaction, that you choose the right vehicle to be able to explore and be able to create the right business arrangement that’s going to work for the government and that’ll work for industry or even the educational institution or international partners.
Terry Gerton I want to come back to workforce in a minute, but I want to ask a couple more questions about GSA’s changing policies, centralization of procurement at GSA, a more category-management approach. How is that playing out in practice?
Karla Smith Jackson In practice, it’s exactly the right thing to do for the common spend items. So things that everybody buys, it might be office supplies, it might be general services, administrative services, that everybody buys, absolutely at GSA, that’s the place for them. It could be IT services or even IT equipment. That’s what GSA should be doing. But the more specialized services, things like launch services, things like, I’ll call it, transportation services, because that’s what space transport, it’s transportation services, but it’s specialized to space. So when we buy services to and from the International Space Station, it’s called transportation services. But we don’t want GSA doing that. NASA should be doing that, so those specialized services should be retained by those acquisition agencies. NASA is a space exploration and a science agency, but it’s also an acquisition agency. Just like DoD, those agencies, a lot of those agencies are acquisition agencies, those specialized procurement activities need to be retained. But those things that are common spend, to your point, category management, there are 10 of those actual spend categories. Those things should be maintained and centralized at GSA. They also need to have centralized systems, contract writing systems. They need to have, what we call, like our power BI tools to be able to manage that spend, to be able to negotiate. And a larger, what I’ll call, economies of scale to be able to get those benefits and the best terms and conditions for the government. So that’s where I see the future. It shouldn’t be a grab of all of the spend, because there are specialized skills that our procurement workforce has developed over time in certain areas in the federal government, and those cannot all be done by GSA.
Terry Gerton And the NASA SEWP contract comes up a lot in this context. What do you see as the future there?
Karla Smith Jackson I do see an opportunity and I do support the NASA SEWP contract being shifted to GSA. But only in the way that we’ve actually executed it. So that means you have to be agile. You have to have the right IT systems to be able to very quickly and adeptly add those services to those schedules, the SEWP schedules, the market research tools, the partnering with industry. That means that when industry identifies a new approach or an innovative offering, we have to be able to turn quickly on a dime and make those offerings available to our clients in the government. If we’re not agile and we’re not flexible, and GSA cannot be able to adapt accordingly, then it needs to stay where it is. We’ve built all of those processes. We have all of the IT backbone. And if GSA is able to take those resources, personnel, IT, and including our support contractors, if they can assimilate that, that’s exactly the right way. And we should exploit that as GSA being that buying, I’ll call it buying command, for those centralized category management IT services. Absolutely.
Terry Gerton That’s a pretty clear perspective, so I appreciate that.
Karla Smith Jackson Thank you.
Terry Gerton Now, let’s segue back to the workforce. Because over your career, you’ve probably led and mentored literally thousands of acquisition professionals. So as you prepare to depart, what is your best advice to them in this current environment and for the future?
Karla Smith Jackson I would say now, I mentioned earlier, I’ve never seen more opportunity than we’ve ever had. The FAR is being rewritten in a major way. We call it the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul. The last time we did this was 41 years ago. So this is a once-in-a-career opportunity. I was lucky and blessed to be a part of the front end of it. My deputy is going to step up and fill my role, Marvin L. Horne, and take over. He’s a millennial, I’m a Gen X. I’m happy to pass the baton to that next generation. I spent the last 10 years of my career as a senior executive preparing that succession plan, making sure that just like the, I’ll say, the baby boomers that were before me prepared me to step into those shoes, and there’s always a time to pass that baton. I think that I had lots of good ideas. I know the millennials have even better ideas, and we have to seize that opportunity and we have to groom that next generation when they come up with better ideas than we had. And we have to continue to streamline, we have to be flexible, and can’t be back in the old way of doing things. It’s like the speed of relevance, I think that Secretary Mattis said that when he was at SECDEF, we have to be able to get things downrange quickly for not just DOD, but for the whole of government. And we will be irrelevant as a nation if we can’t do that. And so our acquisition system has to work quickly. And I’m really excited to pass that baton on the federal side. And I am excited to move to the industry side and work with industry hand-in-hand to partner with the government to be more innovative and more flexible, and come up with some really cool solutions for the federal government.
Terry Gerton Well, you mentioned the FAR overhaul. We’re hearing a lot about the deployment of AI to streamline and simplify procurement. So as you think about this next generation, what are the skills and mindsets that you think will be really important for them to have in order to succeed?
Karla Smith Jackson First and foremost with AI, it’s about ethical use of AI. And I’ve been talking to my team about, what are the guidelines that we need to provide for the workforce? What’s the ethical use AI? Then it’s about prompt engineering. People need help with, how do I put that prompt in there to elicit the answer that I need? And so we’ve been working a lot at NASA and a lot, I’ll say, federal-wide about how do we work on prompt engineering? How do we help the workforce, what question do I ask to elicit? Then AI learns. We have to help teach AI to use our lexicon, our common language. There are things going on with NCMA about using common language and adopting that, not just in government, but across industry, and I would say even globally. If we can build an AI large language model that has those terms and understands those terms, we’ll go a long way. And then a contract writing system to go with it, I think we’re on the verge of something great. I’m really excited, like I said, with where government’s going. And I’m excited to go to the industry side to partner with government, because I think we’re standing on the edge of a revolution. And how we do business, I think, we’ll need less people, and we’ll be much more capable to get this thing done. Now, it’s never going to be 100% automated. We’re going to need people in the loop. And we’re going to need smart people in the loop. It’s not going to be so easy a caveman can do it. I think it’s going to be a higher level of skill than we’ve ever needed or seen. And so those folks that are thinking that a bot is going to do everything, that’s not going to be the case. The bot will do the routine stuff, but we’re doing much more complex contracting than we have ever done. If you think about some of the things that NASA is doing, some of things Space Force is doing, some of the things Army is doing and the military, some of things Homeland Security is doing and Department of Energy, those are very complex contracting. We need the high brain power on those things. And the more routine things, we do the bots, and we leverage AI to support terms and conditions, some of the market research, some of those lower-level things that eat our lunch for time, and then we spend our time doing the negotiation, the terms and condition, the long-term business relationships with industry.
Terry Gerton So Karla, you’ve mentioned a couple of times that you’re going to industry. It sounds like you’re going to join the club of serial retirement failures.
Karla Smith Jackson Yes.
Terry Gerton Welcome, let me just say that. But can you tell us what you’re going to be doing next?
Karla Smith Jackson I’m excited to announce that I’ll be the vice president of contracts for BAE Space and Mission Systems starting on the 18th of August. Be very soon, right around the corner. So I did fail.
Terry Gerton No breaks for you.
Karla Smith Jackson I have a week. But it’s a personal goal of mine, I wanted to go to industry and I wanted to go to just the right company to work on just the right problems, and I’m excited about BAE Space and Mission Systems. It’s still that space world that I love. It might be missiles, it might be satellites. It’s exactly where I need to be, and I’m going to get to relocate to Colorado, the big open skies, and leave the Beltway behind for a little bit and enjoy getting to know new colleagues, new problems, and then work with the government with innovative solutions and flexible opportunities, and I’m over the moon, literally, with having this opportunity.
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