Availability: Political finance data

To what extent is political finance information available as open data?

Definitions

Definitions and Identification

Political finance datasets should provide a comprehensive overview of the financial state of political parties and political campaigns, including their income, assets, and liabilities. Further, whether financial support comes from donations, membership fees, or public funding, datasets should show clearly from whom political parties and political campaigns raise money, how much money, and how that money is spent.

Political finance datasets should be available to members of a public for free, have appropriate language coverage, and include both regular updates and updates that are responsive to campaign schedules. If verification is not standard across all data, datasets should show which data have been verified and which have not.

Among other functions, it should be possible to use political finance datasets to verify that parties and campaigns are not receiving financial support from any entities that may be banned under the country's laws (for example, this often includes foreign entities).

Because countries have different election schedules and this data is responsive to campaigns, if the country you are assessing has not held a major election within the Barometer's period of assessment, please assess data in conjunction with the most recent major election and note this in the free text justification.

Research Guidance

More granular details about donations may be located in a separate donations register.

Starting points

• Sources:
  • Transparency International's Integrity Watch includes political integrity information for ten countries: Chile plus nine in Europe (France, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Slovenia, Span, United Kingdom); depending on the country, this may include political finance data, interest and asset information, and lobbying data; from the main site, select "National versions" to see specifics for each country. Datasets are available here.
• Search:
  • The site of the country's relevant oversight agencies, such as its elections commission, registrar of political donations, etc.
• Consult:
  • Investigative journalists who report on political finance or money in politics more broadly, particularly any who appear to be using aggregate political finance data.
  • Officials of civil society organizations that advocate for transparency and accountability regarding money in politics.

What to look for?

To complete the assessment for this question you will need to access and explore the available data. This may involve running queries on datasets to check the variety of fields included.

Look for evidence that can answer the following questions:

• What financial and non-financial information does the data include? For example, does it include information about financial contributions, income, assets and liabilities, spending, and in-kind or non-financial support?
• What information about donors and donations does the data include? For example, does it include not only donation amounts but identifying details of donors, such as names, residence, occupation, employer?
• Is there evidence of missing data, assessed first against the related governance framework, if that exists, or in the context of the datasets in front of you and your local knowledge?
• Is there evidence that the availability of this data was affected by COVID-19?

National and sub-national considerations

In some countries, political finance data may be generated and published at the sub-national level, carried out by individual states, regions, or cities.

Focus on national government first, and then assess whether:

• National datasets also include data from sub-national or local government units;
• Equivalent data exists for a selection of sub-national or local government units, but is not nationally aggregated;

To assess countries where political finance data is organized sub-nationally, researchers should select the strongest example of sub-national practice, and then indicate whether this is an outlier, or an example of widespread practice.

Question sub-components

Show/hide supporting questions

Existence

• Is this data available online in any form?
  • Data is not available online.

    Supporting questions: Are there other offline ways to access this data in the country? (e.g., attending an office to inspect it).

  • Data is available, but not as a result of government action.

    Supporting questions: If government is not providing access to data, how is this data available? Please provide a URL(s) for where this data can be found.

  • Data is available from government, or because of government actions.

    Supporting questions: Please provide a URL(s) for where this data can be found.

Elements

• Data fields and quality:

• Data contains details of donations, public funding, and membership dues for each party or candidate. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: If political finance data can be found in multiple datasets, please provide the URL(s) where data about different kinds of income are located.

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

• Data contains details of income for each party or candidate. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: If political finance data can be found in multiple datasets, please provide the URL(s) where income details are located.

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

• Data contains details of financial contributions to each party or candidate. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: If political finance data can be found in multiple datasets, please provide the URL(s) where data about financial contributions is located.

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

• Data contains details of assets and liabilities of each party or candidate. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: If political finance data can be found in multiple datasets, please provide the URL(s) where data about assets and liabilities is located.

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

• The data contains details of the spending of each party or candidate. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: If political finance data can be found in multiple datasets, please provide the URL(s) where spending details are located.

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

• Data contains details of in kind and non-financial support donated to each party or candidate. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: If political finance data can be found in multiple datasets, please provide the URL(s) where in kind and non-financial details are located.

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

• Data contains details of the timing and amounts of donations linked to donors. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: If political finance data can be found in multiple datasets, please provide the URL(s) where donation details are located.

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

• Data contains first and last name for each donor. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: If political finance data can be found in multiple datasets, please provide the URL(s) where donor names are located.

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

• Data contains detailed information about each donor, including place of residence, occupation, and employer. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: If political finance data can be found in multiple datasets, please provide the URL(s) where donor details are located.

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

• Data includes unique identifiers for each donor. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: If political finance data can be found in multiple datasets, please provide the URL(s) where donor identifiers are located.

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

• Data openness, timing, and structure:

• Dataset is available free of charge. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

• Data is openly licensed. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If No: If there are explicit restrictions placed on re-use of the dataset, briefly describe those here.

  If Partially or Yes: If the data is provided with an explicit open license, please provide the name of the license, or a link to it here.

• Data is available in all the country’s official or national languages. If the country has no official or national languages, data is available in the major languages of the country. (No, Partially, Yes) Assess this against the list of official, national, or in-use languages you provided as part of your response to the governance indicator that asks, "To what extent do relevant laws, regulations, policies, and guidance require that data collection and publication processes be available in the country’s official or national languages?"

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: Please briefly describe the language coverage available.

• There are accessible and open official tools available to help users explore data. (No, Partially , Yes) Answer 'Partially' if tools make it possible to get at extracts of data without having to download a full dataset. Answer 'Yes' if there is an interactive tool that displays user-filtered extracts of the data to answer simple questions without downloading data at all.

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: Please provide URL.

  If Partially : What are the main barriers to accessibility and usability?

• Data is timely and updated. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: When was the most recent update to this dataset?

• Historical data is available that allows users to track change over time. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

  If Partially or Yes: For what time period(s) (e.g., start and end dates) is data available?

• Data is provided in machine-readable format(s) (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: Please provide a URL where this machine-readable data can be found. (Additional URLs can be included in the justification and supporting evidence)

  If Partially or Yes: Please provide a comma separated list of the formats available? (E.g. csv, json)

  If Partially: What prevents you from assessing this data as fully machine-readable?

• The machine-readable dataset is available as a whole (No, Partially, Yes) Answer no if it's only possible to access individual records; Answer partially if it's possible to export extracts of the data; Answer yes if there are bulk downloads or APIs providing access to the whole dataset without financial, technical or legal barriers.

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: Please provide a URL where bulk download access is available or described.

  If Partially or Yes: If bulk access is provided through an API, please provide a link to where the API is described.

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

• Negative scoring:

• This information is missing required data. (There is no evidence of data gaps., There is evidence that a portion of mandated data is missing., There is evidence of widespread omissions in mandated data.) In cases where the indicator itself identifies a dataset(s) to assess against or a separate governance indicator has asked you to determine data requirements of a relevant governing framework, assess against that. In cases where there is no such identified dataset(s) or related governance indicator, assess based on the parameters laid out in the publication of the information (e.g., are some fields entirely empty when they shouldn't be?), your local knowledge (e.g., if the data is supposed to include information for all public officials, does the number of total entries look right?), and any broader research you may have done for this theme (e.g., have media articles decried the incompleteness of the data?).

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If There is evidence that a portion of mandated data is missing. or There is evidence of widespread omissions in mandated data.: Please briefly explain.

• The availability of this data has been affected by government response to COVID-19. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: Please briefly describe how COVID-19 affected the availability of this data.

Extent

• How comprehensive is the data assessed for this question?
  • The data assessed covers one or more localities, but there are many other localities without available data, or with data of a lesser quality.

    Supporting questions: Which locality does this data cover?

  • The data assessed covers one or more localities, and is a representative example of the kind of data that can be found for most but not all localities.

    Supporting questions: Which localities does this data cover?

  • The data assessed provides national coverage.

Indicator Justification

The United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) calls for transparency regarding the role of money in politics. Transparent campaign and party financing is critical for understanding whose interests shape parties, ballot initiatives, and the decisions of specific public officials. For, while donating to a politician or political cause is widely considered a form of political participation, there is also widespread concern about the effects of money in politics—with particular questions regarding who donates to parties and campaigns, how much, and how that affects political outcomes.

To support political finance transparency efforts, this indicator thus investigates the campaign and party finance data that countries make available. This indicator pairs with a related governance indicator to compare frameworks and actual practice.