Reinvent Albany Cheers Open NY / NY State Open Data Launch

Today in Albany, Governor Cuomo launched New York State’s Open Data Portal. Reinvent Albany applauded the launch as a major — and very positive — first step towards vastly increasing the amount of state and local government data that is available to New Yorkers. According to Reinvent Albany executive director, and NYC Transparency Working Group co-chair John Kaehny,

“Governor Cuomo is opening up the flood gates, and sending out a torrent of valuable state — town and county — data for all of the public to use. This flow of data will increase transparency, spur the innovation economy, improve public services and reduce the cost of government. New York State’s open data initiative is particularly innovative and interesting from a national perspective, because it makes the state’s data website available to local governments as a resource they can use to make their data easier for themselves and the public to find and use.”

Kaehny added:

“Freedom of information is basic to any successful democracy,“Data is simply information in a digital form. ‘Open data’ is the way information is freed for broad public use. Today marks a big step towards a new era in which it’s understood that while government is the steward of the information it collects, the public is the rightful owner.”

Reinvent Albany will follow-up this post with more details about the state’s exciting new open data initiative in the days ahead.