When I visit to local capital cities, I try to get the state government’s printed directories. I know New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont (used to) and maybe a few others in the area I can’t confirm…but I do know Massachusetts firmly doesn’t . I had purchased the New York City’s directory (known as the “Green Book”) online a few years ago, since I haven’t visited the city up until this past April.

The New York State government, however has gone through a massive transformation of government bureaucracy thanks to the leadership of Andrew Cuomo. I had visited Albany last year in April, and I was planning to get the directory then. However, the webpage where you find that information was taken down. This was around the same time they had a separate office for the Chief Information Officer and their Information Technology agency. These agencies merged by this point. I do remember briefly, if I went to the Corning Tower maybe on like the 34th Floor, I could see the operator and request the directory. I didn’t know how to get to that floor, only to go to the top and see Upstate New York.

With that said, I found this web page I was trying to look for that April, now they are located on the concourse in the Empire State Plaza (pretty interesting where they relocated this place.) However, I don’t have plans to visit the northern part of NY for a while, so I mailed a check about a week and a half ago, and I got this on Friday. It left Albany the afternoon before!

The book however contains all the departments, and all their employees that work for the state side of the government, as well as other contact information. It is a few years old, and given the economy, the Internet replacing hard copies, and the requirement for the government to be more efficient, it is still available as of this writing. It’s a neat directory for only about $3.00 if you ever happen to stop at the Empire State Plaza complex and buy it directly.

You can say whatever you want about big government or how inefficient it can be, but this was pretty awesome I got this within timely manner (even if I might be the only out of stater that request these thing on seldom occasions!)

Now I am waiting for the check to clear!