Data Analyst III
Company: RI Department of Administration, Pandemic Recovery Office
March 2023- Present
As the data analyst for the Pandemic Recovery Office (PRO), I oversee the entire data life cycle. This ranges from discussing how data will be collected for a project to the final visualizations and reporting of said data at a project’s conclusion. My main focuses are the State Fiscal Recovery Fund (SFRF) and Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) programs. SFRF encompasses over 100 projects and over $1.1 billion in federal funding while ERA involves an additional $150 million in federal funds. I am in charge of the data collection and cleaning for both of these programs.
When I arrived at the Pandemic Recovery Office, seven consultants were working together to complete my expected duties. Despite minimal experience with the main tool required for the job, PowerBI, in a matter of weeks I was able to take over for the entire team of consultants. My ability to quickly learn and adapt saved the state $3 million dollars in consulting fees and allowed me to expand my role and handle any challenge sent my way.
Most of my time is spent helping to monitor SFRF projects. Each SFRF project has set financial spending benchmarks and key performance indicators (KPIs) that I oversee to make sure a project remains on track and on time. SFRF is a time sensitive program with strict end dates of 12/31/24 to obligate all funds and 12/31/26 to spend all funds. There are also extensive rules and regulations that every project must follow to stay in compliance with the US Treasury. Thus, it is imperative to closely track each project to ensure that no funds will unnecessarily be sent back to the US Treasury and that the entire award amount can be used to benefit the citizens of Rhode Island. My reports assist in flagging projects that are at risk of noncompliance with Treasury guidelines or of not completing on time.
My role in every SFRF project begins in the planning stages. I help create the KPIs for each project, ensuring that they meet state and federal guidelines, that the state agencies administering the project are able to provide the necessary data, and that they will effectively assess the performance of the project. After a project’s approval I begin collecting and compiling the financial and programmatic data into a PowerBI model. This PowerBI model is used by the project leads to present to their agency contacts on the status of their projects and is used to help create regular reports to update the General Assembly on the progress of the SFRF program.
SFRF and ERA also require quarterly reports to the US Treasury. I play a key role in preparing these extensive reports and ensuring accuracy of the information submitted.
Upon the completion of an SFRF project, a final report is produced to display the performance and impact of the project. At this point I conduct complete financial audits of each program to ensure compliance with Treasury regulations and that all financial data is accounted for. When applicable, I also perform in-depth demographic and location-based analysis for each project.
My role in the Pandemic Recovery Office is highly cyclical with monthly and quarterly data collection and reporting. However, my role is constantly evolving to handle any new data related tasks for the office. These vary from modeling project spend to predict when project’s will exhaust their funding to managing relations with third party software vendors.
