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Open NY
More Sunlight in Albany
Technology has provided powerfulnew tools
to make New YorkState government more open,
innovative and cost effective. “Open NY” is an action
plan for putting tools to work*
As Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo’s Project
Sunlightused technology to provide greater
transparency and accountability in State
government.* As Governor, Andrew Cuomo will
expand that effort by creating Open NY—a
technology-based system that will further increase
transparency and improve government performance
by putting State spending, contracts, budgets and
meetings online.
The State has staggering amounts of valuable
information that is hard to find and use. This is a
65waste of tax money and a waste of nowledge.® Open
NY will use the Intemet to make New York State
government more transparent and accountable than
it has ever been before.
Open NY will help to not only increase
transparency, but also government performance. Our
State government isn’t working. It costs too much,
delivers too little, and is confusing, complex and
secretive. This dysfunctional, unaccountable State
government is not going to help solve our big
problems. Open NY is a tool to help fix and rebuild the
State government, and enlist the collective genius of
the citizens of our State to make government better.
Open NY willuse the power of digital
information to bring about the beginnings of a new
era of public participation in everyday governance. In
this era, the collective energy of the citizenry and civil
service are hamessed to help our State government
deliver better, more cost effective services, and
increase government accountability.
Inaccessible government information is a
problem for everyone. Some important State
66information is deeply buried or snarled in red tape.
The Internet allows us to skip the laborious public
request process and simply put important data on
websites.
Information isn’t worth much ifyou can’t find
it and use it. Open NY’s data websites will organize
information, include powerful internal search
features, and ensure all state data is searchable from
the web via search engines. We also want to make
government decision makers accountable for their
spending so that taxpayers get more bang for their
buck.
Specifically, Open NY will follow these core
principles:
Open Information
Open NY willmake government information
available via a central website, which will serve as an
information catalog and clearinghouse in an easily
accessible format. Additionally, we will strive to
create a network of Open NY websites for each State
agency and authority controlled by the Exeautive.
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