Vein also unveiled details of a new project being carried out in the cities of Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and Boston around predictive intelligence and analytics, an area he described as "the future" of open data in government.

"[These cities] have people looking at all of the datasets, mashing them together and then comparing them as ways to predict where crime will take place, where transport challenges will occur and where, for example, the next fire might happen," he said.

"Chicago is actually redoing their budgeting process so that they can put police officers on the beats where they will most likely be needed."