Five Questions with Jaiah Gottor: NYPA’s Senior Digital Director of Resiliency and the Operations Center, Part 1

For this installment of NYPA’s IT employee interview series we are happy to introduce Jaiah Gottor, Senior Director of Digital Resiliency and the Operations Center. The second part of the series will be posted soon.

What is your professional background? How long have you been with NYPA, and how long have you been in your current position?

My name is Jaiah Gottor and I am currently the Senior Director of Digital Resiliency and the Operations Center. I’ve had this role for about 6 months. My title is a bit long, but it fits with the critical IT services that my teams are responsible for, including:

·??????IT Service Management (ITSM)

·??????IT Disaster Recovery and Resiliency

·??????IT Operations Center

Collectively, these teams manage the controls, policies, procedures, assets and situational awareness for NYPA IT to run efficiently, protecting the integrity of our digital infrastructure. We make sure IT provides efficient service with minimal disruptions to end users, maintaining resiliency and our Disaster Recovery program.

My career in IT spans 22 years and 8 of those have been with NYPA. The skills that I have acquired along the way make me well suited for my current role. I have extensive experience in managing both critical IT infrastructure services and business continuity programs. I also have leadership experience in cybersecurity, networking, and cloud infrastructure in addition to resiliency and service management at NYPA and other major organizations like Comcast and IBM.

What has been your most successful digital campaign so far?

My teams, and IT as a whole, play a major role in making the digitization pillar of NYPA’s VISION2030 strategy a reality.

It began with creating a strong digitalization framework and implementing the foundational infrastructure, like the resilient Communications Backbone and cloud infrastructure which are vital to transforming NYPA into the digital utility we are becoming.

We have also instituted a continuous service improvement program, creating an environment fostering technology-driven solutions to the problems we face. We want technology to be woven into the fabric of NYPA and its processes. Once people buy into the technology, it becomes part of the culture, and digitization can be adopted with manageable risks.

How should the Authority evolve to keep up with digital technology?

The Authority has the right strategy in place to keep up with digital technology. Embracing technology as a means to drive efficiency and add value to both our external and internal customers is the first step, and NYPA has fully embraced this strategy from top to bottom.

It calls for a culture where people, processes, and technology are all connected to provide technology driven solutions to our business problems. With this mindset, we will always be at the forefront of using innovative technology to solve problems.

Our Cloud first strategy to deploy business solutions also gives me confidence. Cloud environments are at the leading edge of digital tech and support the culture of Continuous Service Improvement (CSI).

Which skills are the most important when implementing digital change and resiliency?

For me, the most important skills when implementing digital change and resiliency are:

·??????Foundational Digital Skills – The entire organization has to be ‘technology-fluent’ to be able to embrace and take advantage of digital change. This is foundational for it to take hold. It will vary based on your role, but it must be continuous to stay on par with technology.?

·??????Data Analysis – Being able to collect and interpret data to provide insight into business solutions is another benefit of digitization.

·??????Data and Digital Security – Digital change comes with increased cyber threats as your systems now have virtual addresses that bad actors can target if not properly secured. This is a huge concern for organizations. It requires technical proficiency, specialized talent, prioritization in business plans, and strong leadership to anticipate incoming attacks and prepare defenses to counteract them.

·??????DevOps – Automation (AI) – A collaborative environment of development and operations teams to create and deploy software solutions at a fast pace is always beneficial.

·??????Change Management– Sets the right tone and approach on how best to roll out digital change throughout the company for full adoption.

·??????Enterprise Architecture –Make sure that the digital change is in line with the organization’s technology roadmap and strategy.

·??????Cloud and Solutions Architect – You need skills in these areas to make sure that the right digital applications are implemented to solve business problems.

·??????Disaster Recovery and Resiliency – This assures the digital solutions being implemented are resilient and robust to withstand a wide array of disruptions.

·??????Applications and Infrastructure Support – This area supports day-to-day upkeep of the digital environment and helps resolve system issues.?

Can you explain the difference between digitization and digitalization, and how these play into NYPA’s resiliency?

The digitization process converts information from analog to digital form, like scanning a photo or a document into digital form. Digitalization on the other hand is the use of digital technologies to fundamentally change business processes and provide value-producing opportunities.

Simply put, it refers to enabling or improving processes by leveraging digital technologies and digitized data. Digitization is a perquisite for a system or process to be included in digitalization initiatives.??

As far as resiliency at NYPA goes, we have moved beyond digitization, as all of our IT services and systems are now digitized. The focus now is on digitalization, employing digital tools to proactively monitor our resiliency posture and, in some cases, dynamically correct faults to mitigate problems, also using digital tools to fortify NYPA’s digital assets and prepare for unexpected contingencies.