NY Breaks New Ground with State-Local Open Data Partnership

From Governor Cuomo’s recent executive order on open data:

Opportunity for Localities to Participate.  Localities are invited, and are encouraged, to submit data to the Open Data Website for publication in accordance with guidelines set forth in the Open Data Handbook.  ITS shall assist localities so they may use the Open Data Website.  Such assistance shall include, but not be limited to, technical assistance and expertise, and accommodations shall be made for variations among local governments’ capacity and equipment.

We think this presents an exciting opportunity for open data in New York State, and this order is one of the first examples we’ve seen in the US of offering state IT resources as a shared services between state and local government. The fact that nearly 70 localities have signed on in the first week points to state-local shared services as a huge new area of open government activity.