5 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 65waste 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 66information 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. 67