SaQus IT Solutions
PO Box 304 Guilderland Center, NY 12085
Phone: (518) 861-5661
Fax: (518) 861-3686
www.saqus.com

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Lea Carmichael
(518) 861-5661
lea@saqus.com

SaQus IT Solutions Assists in Creating the Most Informative Website Taxpayers Need to Visit:  Introducing OpenBook New York


Albany, NY June 17, 2008 - Under contract with the Office of the New York State Comptroller, SaQus IT Solutions has assisted the Agency in creating a website where New Yorkers can see exactly where their tax dollars go.  Open Book New York depicts the financial information of, and for, all New York State.

Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli has made it his personal mission to make New York State's financial information completely available to the public.  DiNapoli believes that taxpayers have the right to track expenditures, and in doing so they can understand how and why their tax dollars are used.

Open Book New York (www.openbooknewyork.com) was an intense project completed in 3 months.  SaQus IT Solutions' resources were used to create the NYS Active Contract Search portion of the website. SaQus also assisted the Comptroller’s Office with solution integration. 

Open Book New York was created using ColdFusion 7.0 Server and SQL Server 2005.  Information for the application is extracted daily using automated scripts that retrieve data from the OSC’s data warehouse (Oracle) and loads it to the Open Book database (SQL Server).  The ColdFusion server runs on Microsoft’s IIS 6.0 web server.  Style-sheets are CSS 2.0 compliant.  HTML pages are XHTML 1.0 Transitional compliant.  Dreamweaver, W3C website, and OSC's internal web group were utilized for compliancy testing.  Dreamweaver 8.0 was used for the creation of HTML, CSS, and ColdFusion pages.  HP LoadRunner software was used for application load testing.  Before the final launch today, a focus group was organized for user testing and to provide feedback.

The website is of a simple design that is easy to use.  Searches can be based on dollar amount, agency, company name, and/or a specific frame of time.  Categories can be quickly selected and instantly searched.  If a visitor has trouble navigating the site or understanding the information,  there are Search Tips, Frequently Asked Questions, a Glossary of Terms, and even a Help-desk available.

SaQus IT Solutions dedicated a great deal of time and effort to assist fellow New York taxpayers in accessing imperative information with speed and simplicity. 

SaQus IT Solutions is a small business enterprise (SBE).  Over the last twelve years, SaQus has been providing the Capital Region with business solutions, specializing in Custom Application Development, Internet/Web applications, and Microsoft solutions.

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