"We are focusing a great deal on data and the release of data to create a common platform. We have started with cities.data.gov, which we soft launched a couple of weeks ago, with data from Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago and New York," said Vein.

"We can now show that data alongside federal data and amazing things are starting to happen as entrepreneurs are starting to mash those two datasets together and create new applications, platforms and businesses."

He added: "We plan to launch counties.data.gov at the end of the month and states.data.gov will launch next month. The whole idea is to build a common platform, show data from cities, counties, states, federal government, international governments, standardise that data and then give people access to it for re-use."

, where minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, recently launched a whitepaper that detailed the government's drive to release data into the public domain for analysis and re-use. However, at the time of launch Maude said that 'there is nothing easy about transparency' and the 'formative years of open government will be tricky'.

Nonetheless, the white paper detailed new government commitments to open data, which include publishing data on which organisations receive grant funding, releasing information on how EU funds are used in the UK, and detailing the results of international aid projects.