Around the world, governments are opening access to public data sets and allowing the public to find, download and use machine-readable data sets generated by the government. These initiatives spur innovation and creativity, increase government accountability and transparency, reduce waste and fraud, and improve our quality of life. Yet New York State lags miserably. This open letter to Andrew Cuomo exhorts the Governor to give the public free access to machine readable New York State government data in non-proprietary formats, to convert that data into open linked standards to allow it to be easily connected to other data, and to encourage broad, innovative use of the data by providing the appropriate tools and incentives.