The site is called NewYork.OpenLegislation.org, and it also allows users to see how each lawmaker voted on a particular piece of legislation.  Users will also be able to see whether lawmakers attended their committee meetings.

Kallos has already launched a Web site to help the public search voter data information. In a brief interview, Kallos said he and others are paying for the cost of the site—a few hundred dollars—out of their own pockets, but hopes to get grant funding for it later. Kallos helped aggregate the information for the site by using public data, and filing Freedom of Information Law requests, he said.

The site is of a piece with the continued Rasiej-ization of progressive politics, coming as part of a 50-state project to make more information about state legislatures public and accessible and following the launch of Andrew Cuomo's SunlightNY.com.

Anderson's hire, along with those of Brian Keeler as director of communications and Andrew Hoppin as chief information officer, is part of the larger effort to bring the idea of Government 2.0 to New York. It's all of a piece with the agenda being pushed by the politically connected open-source-technology-and-transparency proselytizers Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry.

"Brian and I have known each other for years, we both know Micah and Andrew Hoppin," Anderson told me. "We do travel in the same circles. And one of the things that really appealed to me about coming to work for the State Senate is being able to implement some of the stuff we've been talking about for years."

Anderson told me he'll earn $70,000 a year in the new post.

Cuomo's release says the new version of the site contains interactive maps; links to the 2009-2010 state budget; all 10,036 member items in 2008-2009 state budget; bill jackets containing information from debates; and information available in Spanish.

Cuomo first unveiled the site in 2007; it was developed by Blair Horner, a longtime good-government advocate. The idea, however, came from the 2005 public advocate campaign of Andrew Rasiej. After he lost the race to Betsy Gotbaum, Rasiej joined the Sunlight Foundation in Washington, D.C.

"Imitation is definitely the highest form of flattery, and it's clear that the attorney general is following the lead of the Sunlight Foundation in Washington in collecting data and putting it into the hands of the public," Rasiej said by phone as he clicked around the upgraded site. "It's a direct descendant of the Sunlight Foundation work in Washington, and therefore it would be terrific if the attorney general went further and made the raw data feeding the web site open and accessible to developers."

And as Liz notes, like many Andrew Cuomo initiatives, the timing is impeccable, politically.

He has long ties to blogging and new media. After an unsuccessful bid against State Senator Steve Saland in 2006, Keeler co-founded the Albany Project blog. He currently works with VShift.

"The thing that I like about Malcolm and Angelo is that they understand the new media, they understand the importance of new communication tools, and they are willing people like me who have the background on blogs and in the net roots. I'm not your traditional kind of communications director," Keeler said in a brief interview Thursday. The Senate Democrats have promised to focus on new media, and hired Andrew Hoppin as part of their general, Rasiej-ward shift.

"I think a recent poll showed that 67 percent of people in America are finding the internet as their main news source. And for us to ignore that would be a huge mistake. So although I won't be totally focused on the internet, I think we have to make sure that people who read newspapers get accurate information from the State Senate, people who are online, people who download video from their telephone, people who twitter - all of these platforms will be coordinated," he said. "My job is to be the maestro and make sure they're all playing the same song."

So will that mean a Malcolm Smith Twitter feed?

"I think there's plans of that in the offing," he said. "I've still got to talk to Malcolm about that."

Keeler started work Thursday and is paid $145,000.

He was responding to Sanford Dickert, a tech consultant and strategist who worked on projects including Twitter Vote Report, which used social media to aggregate reports on conditions and wait lines at polling stations last November. Mr. Dickert was discussing a similar project his is working on, called New York Taxi Report, and expressing his frustration with the government’s unwillingness to open up stats and numbers that other groups might find useful—like 311 reports. “There are internal constraints, both legal and political strains, to get them to do what you want them to do,” he said.

Mr. Rasiej said the group had to come to a decision: either they use their tech savvy skills and become a "guerilla organization" that creates programs and web-based applications to show government the power of existing data, “and wait for them to catch up with us.” Or they lobby the government to operate with a more open data policy. “I think the latter is a waste of time,” Mr. Rasiej said.

The goal of the Open Government NYC Meeup, according to head organizer Matt Cooperrider, was to bring together everyone working on Government 2.0 initiatives in the city and suss out who is working on what—and maybe pool their efforts. After sipping Brooklyn Brewery beers and munching on cheese and cookies, about 40 of the attendees tried to figure out how they could help—from creating Twitter feeds for each New York City subway line and setting up platforms for crowd-sourced reports to explaining to politicians exactly why open data is so important.

Many, including Austin Osmer, campaign manager for Rev. Billy Tallen, who is running for mayor against Michael Bloomberg on an open data platform, called for the city to open up data culled from 311. In early March, City Council speaker Christine Quinn and Councilwoman Gale Brewer, who chairs the Committee on Technology in Government, proposed that the administration create a mobile 311 application so citizens could get quick, basic information, like school closings, and report on local crimes and potholes from their iPhones or BlackBerry devices. But, if Ms. Quinn truly wanted to “eliminate the middleman” as she said, one Personal Democracy Forum blogger said, she’d have to give the raw data to the public so they can decide what kind of connections and displays will be useful for them. It’s not about PDFs and iPhone applications, it’s about the numbers, stats and reports behind the government-curated graphics.

Mr. Rasiej said that “it’s not her you need to get to, it’s her policy makers” like Paul Cosgrave, the city’s commissioner of the department of information technology and telecommunications, and local city council members.

“There are government people who want to do better, but they don’t know how,” added Rachael Fauss, research and policy associate at Citizens Union, an independent organization that promotes good government and political reform. Ms. Fauss previously worked as former legislative director for Assemblywoman Barbara Clark. She encouraged the high-tech coders in the room to educate their politicians. “It’s really worth it to teach them and help them understand what the problem is,” she said. “Otherwise, nothing is going to change.”

Mr. Rasiej has been consulting Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith on making Albany more open and transparent through technology. Besides introducing Andrew Hoppin as a candidate for the chief information officer position, he has been working with Andrew Stengel, senior policy advisor for government reform, on a YouTube channel, created on Feb. 20, called NYSenateRulesReform, to help foster public participation in the Temporary Senate Committee on Rules and Administration Reform’s hearings and testimonies. According to the YouTube page, the group “has been charged with undertaking a thorough review of the how the Senate conducts its business, and with making recommendations to increase openness, fairness and accountability, and a more participatory and transparent legislative process.”

Mr. Rasiej also suggested that Mr. Smith hire a new communications director who is familiar with social networking tools—like Twitter—to connect with constituents.

These changes are part of a momentum, Mr. Rasiej told the Observer in a recent interview, to change the way the state government has operated for the past three decades by making it more transparent and efficient with technology.

Louis Klepner, who works on CivicID.org and the NYC Community Fiber Project, which aims to bring stronger broadband connectivity to the city, said the tech savvy folks in the room should break out of their inner circles and become more visible to local government. He said he attended a city council meeting about open government and broadband access, and he was one of only five people there. “One thing that we have en masse is our mass,” he said. “We need to use it.”

But after more than two years at the agency, he was itching to get more involved in the “government 2.0” initiatives that Mr. Obama and his new-media team were working on in Washington.

So in January, he approached his friend, Andrew Rasiej, a fixture in political tech circles. It was perfect timing; since early January, Mr. Rasiej and Micah Sifry, co-founders of Personal Democracy Forum and techPresident.com, had been advising the New York Senate majority leader, Malcolm Smith, on using technology to make Albany more open, transparent and efficient—the same kind of work Mr. Hoppin had been doing at NASA. Mr. Rasiej encouraged Mr. Hoppin to consider applying his talents to New York State.

“I told him, Obama’s people will be looking over your shoulder because they won’t be able to move fast enough,” Mr. Rasiej told The Observer. In the Senate, Mr. Rasiej explained, Mr. Hoppin had the opportunity to “move the ball farther” and set an example for upgrading government for every state in the nation.

“They convinced me that they were really serious about this,” said Mr. Hoppin, 37, who is mild-mannered, of medium height and wears gray suits with blue shirts to match his eyes. He often keeps his top button unbuttoned. “They would take Albany, which doesn’t have the best reputation for being the most efficient place, and do it right with transparency and technology.” Mr. Smith, along with Senate secretary Angelo Aponte, appointed Mr. Hoppin to be the first ever chief information officer for the New York State Senate.

ON A RECENT bright March morning, Mr. Hoppin was on the 19th floor of 250 Broadway, in a conference room in the Senate majority leader’s office, conducting a meeting with the team he had been quietly building since he was hired on Jan. 29. Their mission? To upgrade the New York State Senate and bring it into the 21st century with technology. For some members of the CIO team, it was their first full week on the job.

“Do you have any Facebook updates?” asked Jim Bell, the director of Senate technology services. He was videoconferencing in from Mr. Hoppin’s Albany office, along with Dean Hill, a veteran technology policy analyst. Sitting at a long wooden table, their laptops at attention, were Krista Brenner, a former Assembly chief of staff and State Senate campaign manager; Noel Hidalgo, a digital communications and technology organizer for both John Kerry’s presidential campaign and the New York Senate’s minority leader’s office; and Ben Yee, who ran President Obama’s New York State new-media team during his campaign. Mr. Yee answered Mr. Bell: “Facebook just restructured the way they operate, again,” he said, so he had to make changes to the “Facebook strategy document”—a guide that will be posted on the Senate’s new Web site (also in the works) to explain the social networking site and how senators might find it useful.

Mr. Yee is also designing a “Twitter strategy document” that will encourage Senators and their staff to sign up for the microblogging service. Just that morning, Mr. Hoppin had been flashing his new Senate business card, the first ever to boast a Twitter address: @ahoppin.

“It’s a cultural stake in the ground,” Mr. Hoppin explained to The Observer, “saying, you know, not only is [Twitter] not a bad idea, it’s a good idea to communicate openly about what you’re doing—it’s relevant for government transparency, it’s relevant for government efficiency, it’s relevant to get people aware of what you’re doing so they can participate in what you’re doing.”

To be sure, if Mr. Hoppin and his team have a mantra, it’s “efficiency, transparency and participation.” In just a few weeks, they announced that senators could (finally) access their email on the Web (efficiency). They launched a Facebook page, Twitter account and Tumblr blog to announce new projects from the chief of information office (transparency). And they helped create, literally overnight, two Web sites to solicit suggestions from constituents on the M.T.A.’s budget shortfall (NYMTAIdeas.org) and opinions on the state’s budget deficit (NYBudgetIdeas.org), as well as a prototype Web site for the Plain Language Initiative, which translates extracts data and legal jargon from M.T.A. budget documents into readable text, tables and charts to help commuters understand why the M.T.A. board is proposing bridge tolls, fare hikes and service cuts (participation).

And that’s only the beginning. Within the next month, the team will launch a new Web site designed with Drupal, an open-source software program, (which powers Observer.com) that will make blogging available to senators and include applications for more public participation. Constituents will be able to post views on new bills and initiatives, as well as review and “vote” up and down on the ideas of others. The CIO team is organizing training sessions for senators and their staff on social networking platforms and how to pay attention to online feedback. Last week, they hired mobile specialist Nathan Freitas to create new phone applications that will allow citizens to get government news on the go. This week, they hired a Drupal whiz, Craig Leinoff, who worked as technical officer and contributor for Jewcy Magazine.

The group plans on creating a wiki—an editable, community-created online document—that will welcome ideas and suggestions from New Yorkers and other state government staffers on their road map to upgrading Albany.

“Technology has to be a strategic asset of every office, rather than something that is off in a corner,” Mr. Hoppin told The Observer. “There’s a lot of room for government to use technology for better transparency, better efficiency, better participation, but also empowering legislators to do a better job—but it requires putting technology at the center.”

Senator Smith and Mr. Aponte have put their faith in Mr. Hoppin to get the job done. “How do you undo decades of complacency in a couple of weeks?” asked Mr. Smith’s press secretary, Austin Shafran. “We have complete confidence in him. He’s opening up our eyes to whole new levels.”

“Malcolm Smith and his staff’s commitment to reorganizing Albany on a 21st-century platform, with a commitment to transparency for constituents, is the most significant political event in the past 30 years and has the potential to be not thought of as evolutionary but revolutionary,” said Mr. Rasiej, who is also technology advisor to online government watchdog initiative Sunlight Foundation. Mr. Hoppin and his team “have the right DNA to change Albany.”

MR. HOPPIN a Brookline, Mass., native, studied planetary sciences and environmental science, policy and management at Brown University and Berkeley. He was a tech entrepreneur in New York before he founded a local group in the draft–Wesley Clark movement, New York for Clark, in 2003. He joined Mr. Clark’s presidential campaign in Little Rock, Ark., and helped manage the campaign’s voter data and the nation’s first open-source campaign software volunteer program—called Clark Tech Corps. After Mr. Clark withdrew from the race, Mr. Hoppin joined the new-media masterminds behind Howard Dean’s campaign to help manage CivicSpace Labs, which developed open-source software to aid political and charity communities for online organizing and advocacy. The group’s work became “the godfather model for organizations like Blue State Digital,” the company that became famous for their new-media work with President Obama, Mr. Rasiej said.

So being right in “the belly of the beast” in Albany, as Mr. Rasiej put it, is new for Mr. Hoppin. He spends about two or three days a week in Albany, and the rest of the time with his team in Mr. Smith’s New York City office.

“These new technologies will help senators be able to post ideas and issues that they want more minds on. That shouldn’t be hard, that shouldn’t be a huge process or a discreet process, once you create it right the first time,” Mr. Hoppin said. “Conversations in the corner of the room are always going to happen. But things can be moved through technology and communication mechanisms so there are more opportunities to see what we’d like to see in terms of transparency and efficiency and accountability, improvements in process.”

Mr. Hoppin said that once antiquated software is replaced and new Web-based applications and training are in place, senators and their staffers will have more time and money to work among, and for, their constituents.

Mr. Rasiej added that by releasing raw data—stats, ideas, process paths and money trails—the government allows technologists, organizations and citizens to create new ways to present information that might be more useful than the senate's official format. “Making a document available to the public in as real time as possible is the only way that the government fulfills their mandate for an openness and transparency and serve their constituents,” he said. These changes will not only refashion Albany’s image as corrupt and outdated, but also empower people, Mr. Rasiej said.

“People underestimate the power of data,” he added. “It’s like letting the genie out of the bottle.”

“For me, as a human being, that’s the most empowering experience I can have—is having the opportunity to really contribute to somebody or something that is really important to me,” Mr. Hoppin added. “If we all had that opportunity in our town, our state or from above, we’d all be enriched by that. We’d become more educated about our government; we’d become more empowered to exercise oversight into our government and contribute to our communities.”

greagan@observer.com