A new Internet application giving New Yorkers ability to instantly access, browse through and download financial details of New York’s state budget was unveiled today by the Empire Center.

The “Explore Your State Budget” app, at www.seethroughny.net/nysbudget, usefully organizes and condenses the financial plan data made available in raw spreadsheet form through Governor Andrew Cuomo’s new “Open Budget” initiative, according to E.J. McMahon, senior fellow at the Empire Center.

The app includes disbursement and receipts items from the governor’s proposed Executive Budget for fiscal 2014. It also includes actual results, estimates and projections for major spending and tax categories dating back to 2011 and stretching out to fiscal 2017, along with a time series of total annual disbursements dating back to 1984 and tax receipts dating back to 1976.

“Governor Cuomo deserves credit for promoting the use of the latest technology to spread access to important public information,” McMahon said. “Consistent with his initiative, our app will give taxpayers direct access to high-value, regularly updated data on how their money is raised and spent in Albany.”

“The scope and variety of financial details presented with the Executive Budget have been steadily expanding since the mid-1990s,” McMahon added. “But the flip side of this improved transparency has been increased complexity, verging on information overload. Our app, accessible on tablets as well as desktop and laptop computers, simplifies matters by providing a simple entry portal to thousands of financial plan data points.”

Users of the “Explore Your State Budget” app can download charts showing disbursement and receipts trends over multiple years, for the budget as a whole or for specific categories or subcategories. There also are separate breakouts of actual and projected spending on key areas such as Medicaid, school-year school aid, debt, and employee pensions.