NYPA’s VP of Product Development, Data Management & Enterprise Architecture

Q&A With Ron Carroll – ‘Transforming NYPA Using Data’

There have been many ‘hidden heroes’ at NYPA and beyond during the COVID pandemic, and if one person encapsulates the concept, it is Ron Carroll, NYPA’s VP of Product Development, Data Management & Enterprise Architecture. The below Q&A session will give the reader a clear idea why.

Guiding NYPA’s Digital Tech

As VP of this large IT group, Ron oversees the development of new software applications and products. The group is composed of developers, analysts, testers, architects and data scientists, while product managers oversee the whole software development process from concept to launch, and also provide support to the applications while they are in production.

Ron comments, “Data governance, quality, ingestion, integration and analytics…they are all drivers of our group. The movement of data around NYPA, and its use to drive business decisions, is vital. Our group takes data and makes it accessible to the whole enterprise, as well as the specific teams that need it. And governance is just as important - making sure that the data is not flowing uncontrolled but is being appropriately transmitted and utilized by the proper teams through the proper channels.”

Along with data, the ‘digital bones’ of NYPA are crucial, as Ron continues to explain. “Enterprise Architecture – setting and steering NYPA’s tech strategy presently and for the future – guides the Authority in its digitalization journey. This includes using the latest technology in the most appropriate way. We don't always want to be on the bleeding edge, but we want to stay apprised of what is happening in energy and use new tech when it becomes available.”

Challenges in Many Forms

For all of the development, testing and deployment responsibility assigned to Ron’s shop, it is clear his group is a sprawling one. He says “30 staff, 40 consultants - the number fluctuates through demand. NYPA staff provide day-to-day oversight to teams of contractors, and this gives our people opportunity to lead while also looking at what new technology is out there, learning how it works. We work very closely with Eric Meyers in NYPA’s cybersecurity group to make certain that all our apps and products abide by NYPA's cybersecurity policies, making certain that only appropriate teams and groups get specific types of data access and certainly making sure that no new security breaches are created. Security is critical to anything we develop and put into production.”

Of course, serious challenges come with the territory too. Ron continues, “Our group’s biggest challenge is managing the tremendous volume of work and keeping the team's, as well as NYPA's, priorities in mind at all times. And along with the workload, there is the question of staffing. It is not always easy to find people with the necessary skills quickly. The job market in this type of IT space is highly competitive and finding a contractor or hiring new employees can be fierce, especially where very new data technologies are concerned. Finding data scientists for our team can be extremely competitive, just as one example. It was challenging even before COVID, and now that competition has become truly fierce.”

“The newest IT skillsets are also the highest in demand - data scientists, data and cloud engineers,” comments Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer Rob Piascik, who is also participating in this Q&A session.

Producing When It Counted the Most

Ron's staff worked most weekends for the past year plus, demonstrating 'truly agile software development.' In that time, Ron's teams released 35 new COVID applications - showing that NYPA can work on quick software releases with development agility. Throughout the pandemic they showed an agility in every definition of the word, through stress and duress, proving their tremendous value to both the wider organization and to New York State. COVID really accelerated NYPA's ability to work with more agility...not just from an IT perspective but with our business partners as well.

Beyond the always-pertinent staffing questions and with COVID being brought under control, Ron’s group is getting back to a place of normalcy, bringing their attention to other projects that their teams had to put aside to work on COVID specific apps.