Fun facts about public data

This page showcases interesting findings from our work with publicly released governmental data. These observations are not critiques, but rather minor quirks that can occur in any large dataset.

While we report issues upstream when appropriate, we don't consider them urgent matters for governmental institutions to address. In our experience, these organizations have been receptive and open to feedback.

Missing documents in the Croatian database

03/06/25

The State Electoral Commission of the Republic of Croatia's database is missing certain party documents from 2019 and 2020, including lists of donations. These documents were previously linked but now return a "404 Not Found" error.

2019 - HRVATSKA BRANITELJSKA PUČKA STRANKA - HBPS
2019 - STRANKA UMIROVLJENIKA - SU
2020 - MAKSIMIRSKA GRAĐANSKA INICIJATIVA - ZAJEDNO - MGI - ZAJEDNO
2020 - ŽELJKO KERUM - HRVATSKA GRAĐANSKA STRANKA - HGS

This was reported to Državno izborno povjerenstvo Republike Hrvatske.

EU foundation donation country code uses Greek unicode characters

12/10/24

There was one donation in the 2021 EU foundation document that randomly used Greek unicode characters to represent the ISO country code for Belgium (GREEK CAPITAL LETTER BETA and GREEK CAPITAL LETTER EPSILON). Everywhere else, they correctly use the ASCII characters instead.

NOVE SA;ΒΕ;6000
NOVE SA;BE;6000

This was reported to Authority for European Political Parties and European Political Foundations.

Australia had some donations dated to 2106

11/22/24

There seemed to be a typo for in the dataset of the Australian Electoral Commission for some donations in the year 2016 that were dated to 2106.

2015-16;XXX;ALP National Secretariat/ALP - FED;4/14/2106;3500
2015-16;XXX;Liberal Party of Australia/LIB-NSW;5/25/2106;1500

This was reported to Australian Electoral Commission and they can't change it.

Austria changed their currency format for new rows

11/08/24

For some reason the 2024 donation document from Austria changed it's currency format for new rows from "EUR" to "Euro".

KPÖ;30.07.24;27.06.24;XXX;1100;1000;EUR;KPÖ Bundespartei; KPÖ;04.11.24;26.07.24;YYY;1150;1000;Euro;KPÖ Bundespartei;

This was reported to Rechnungshof and corrected by them.

Incorrect link on Romania's donation page

09/29/24

Romania links to the donation data of "PDR PARTIDUL DISPORA ROMANA" which points to a 404 page.

This was reported to Departamentul de Control al Finanțării Partidelor.

Changed date format for new donations in Germany

04/04/24

The Bundestag has changed the date format for new donations. The month was written out for the newly added donations. This change was later corrected.

3. April 2024
03.04.2024

Germany had a typo in one of its zipcode for Frankfurt

02/23/24

One donation in 2021 had "0329" as its zip for Frankfurt, which is incorrect as it should be "60329".

Deutsche Vermögensberatung AG
Wilhelm-Leuschner-Straße 24
0329 Frankfurt am Main

This was reported to Bundestag and corrected by them.

The Austrian party donation document for 2022 randomly uses macintosh file encoding

02/06/24

All csv files from Austria use utf8 encoding except the one from 2022 which uses Apple Macintosh encoding.

Zu ver�ffentlichen;;;;;;