The Philippines has published its 2015 Budget data in an open format in parallel with the annual Budget announcement for the first time.

The Department of Budget and Management announced the release of the 2015 budget datasets in .csv format yesterday, meaning that “users will have an easier time searching for specific items”, Florencio Abad, Secretary of Budget said.

“This is the first time this has happened in sync [with the budget submission]. It is important to be prompt with relevant datasets like the budget. We are seeing our efforts through to the [open data] initiative by releasing data on time,” Gianne Gaoiran, Data Lead, Open Data Philippines added.

The country’s 2015 budget proposal includes an open data policy, Abad also said during the release of the data. It requires all national government agencies, public universities and government-owned firms to make data it creates and collects with taxpayers’ money machine-readable, available in open format and released with open licenses.