Cauayan City as an emerging Smart City in the Philippines depends on its survival to its agricultural resources and its people who are driven to feed the world and meet the demands of a very competitive market. Local people mostly empowered with the richness of the agricultural sector envision sustainable livelihood with support and equitable protection from the government to be able to progress from the economic status quo of the place and explore new business ventures to house more opportunities so local needs will be served for its people. It shows that for a couple of years now, the city has exhibited remarkable products, services, and foods, and transforming natural areas into agritourism sites pave the way to boost the local economy and hold autonomy to its resources.

While these ventures drive the way to progress, technology conditions the level of competition in the business sector. This era of innovation employs technology to support massive and fast productions to be able to meet the demands of consumers and extend the comforts to various markets. However, the competition poses a significant challenge in the lives of the MSMEs in the City of Cauayan while equipment/infrastructures to support and protect business ventures are insufficient or inaccessible to all.

That is why, it is in the best interest of DAP in partnership with the DOST, ISU, AAP, and the City of Cauayan to convene experts from the City and the rest of the country in an Open Data challenge to come up with clean and reliable data sets that can be utilized to develop innovations on budgeting mechanisms/results/alignment/sourcing critical in supporting and protecting business efforts.