Paul Cosgrave doesn’t look like your average gadget-obsessed techie: His pinstripe suit and American flag lapel pin make him seem more like an accountant than a computer guru.

For the last five months, Mr. Cosgrave has been at the center of the city’s technological control room, overseeing some of the most sophisticated upgrades the city has ever attempted.

Tapped by Mayor Bloomberg to take over as commissioner of the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, Mr. Cosgrave has kept a low profile since coming on board in June.

He’s been working on several major projects, including the 2008 rollout of a $500 million high-speed, wireless network for emergency responders and city employees.

Like the mayor, who created a global company that hinges on the technology it delivers to the finance world, Mr. Cosgrave, 56, spent most of his career in the private sector and has the same impatience with bureaucracy that his boss has.

“I’m a kind of a ‘Let’s knock down the bureaucracy, let’s knock down the walls and try to make things work smoother'” person, Mr. Cosgrave said during a recent interview at his Lower Manhattan office.

The Queens-born DOITT commissioner talks authoritatively about upgrades to the city’s 911 system and negotiating new cable franchises, which is expected to bring into the market new providers, including Verizon, and drive down prices for consumers who have been limited by the Time Warner and Cablevision duopoly.

Mr. Cosgrave — whose agency has nearly 1,130 employees and a $300 million annual budget — also has orders from the mayor to institutionalize government transparency in a way that cannot be reversed by future administrations.

In the age of high-speed technology, where government must choose how far to get into the Internet provider business, Mr. Cosgrave faces challenges in the remaining years of Mr. Bloomberg’s term.

Some of those who follow municipal technology advances have criticized the Bloomberg administration, saying it is falling behind other cities and should do more to encourage or provide wireless and broadband Internet networks. Forbes magazine recently ranked New York 12th for Wi-Fi access (although it was second for the number of people switching to broadband).

The executive director of NYCwireless, Dana Spiegel, called the quality of the broadband network in New York “embarrassing,” saying it is too slow, too expensive, and not available in enough places.

Mr. Spiegel and others have applauded the city for moving ahead with the new $500 million public safety network, but have said the city should consider allowing the public onto that network.

In September, the city brought on Diamond Management and Technology Consultants, a private firm selected through a competitive bidding process, to conduct a “Broadband Needs Assessment and Feasibility Study.”

Mr. Cosgrave’s agency is not in charge of that study, but the commissioner said he is involved in it and in assessing the Wi-Fi situation citywide as well. DoITT’s role in negotiating new cable franchises could open up the Internet market to more competition.

Mr. Cosgrave said allowing public access to the new $500 million network is not an option because of the potential for an overload during an emergency. He also said it “isn’t feasible or necessary” to provide Wi-Fi throughout the city.

The city recently created Wi-Fi hotspots at four parks, including in Central Park and Battery Park, but there have been delays at six other parks, which were supposed to be wireless by the end of the summer. “I don’t think there’s going to be 100% Wi-Fi coverage throughout the city because it just probably not practical,” Mr. Cosgrave said.

Critics have acknowledged that going fully wireless in New York, as some other cities have done, is not realistic. Most of those who’ve had contact with Mr. Cosgrave have nothing but praise for him. “He’s the kind of manager I think the government should be full of,” the chairwoman of the City Council’s Technology in Government Committee, Gale Brewer, said.

Mr. Cosgrave got his first taste of life in the public sector during three-year stint as the chief information officer at the Internal Revenue Service between 1998 and 2001. He was hired to help turn the notoriously bureaucratic tax collection agency into a tech-friendly organization. He is credited with accomplishing that goal.

At 6 feet, 4 inches, Mr. Cosgrave may be the tallest city commissioner in the Bloomberg administration. He seems at ease in his bullpen-style office. He joked that as a Republican, the IRS seemed a funny fit at first because he was thinking that the staff would be “sitting around having a great time on my tax dollars.” But, he said, that was not the case.

An engineer by trade, Mr. Cosgrave has a strong grasp on the nuts and bolts of the technology, but he’s got a wide array of other issues to tackle, ranging from delays with implementing upgrades to 311 to dealing with the flashy, MTV-style content of the city’s television station.

Like many New Yorkers, he’s into podcasts. His iPod nano holds 435 songs and about 20 podcasts, ranging from the Economist to ESPN Radio. Next up is getting more New York City podcasts into that mix, something he is considering.

The chief technology officer at any company or organization, he said, must have a reasonably good understanding of the tech end so that “they aren’t getting snowed by their people.”

Still, he doesn’t consider himself an extreme techie, saying he wasn’t even a “heavy BlackBerry user until I got here.”