# Market research: existing politician-tracking services

Researched October 2026. The goal was to find what already exists for Austria,
what comparable projects in other countries do well, and where the gaps are.

## Austria

| Project | What it does | Gap / relevance for us |
|---|---|---|
| [MeineAbgeordneten.at](https://www.meineabgeordneten.at) | NGO (Verein für Transparenz und Demokratie, founded 2011 by Respekt.net). Around 800 hand-curated dossiers covering federal and EU politicians and members of state governments and parliaments: functions, education, side income, association roles, APA-OTS releases ([presentation 2024](https://politik-lernen.at/dl/nrtoJKJKKokoNJqx4KJK/Pr_sentation_MeineAbgeordneten_30_4_24_pdf), [overview](https://politik-lernen.at/meineabgeordneten_30minutenplus)). | Closest existing service. Its dossiers are curated by hand and do not track votes, media appearances or donations on an ongoing basis. It is also the only Austrian source listed by OpenSanctions. **Best partner rather than competitor**: ask for a data partnership. |
| [Parteispenden.at](https://www.opengovpartnership.org/stories/who-funds-political-parties-what-we-have-learned-from-an-effort-to-create-meaningful-transparency/) (Forum Informationsfreiheit) | Aggregates party-financing information with visualisations. | Covers donations only. Its authors note that donor names alone don't explain which interests sit behind them. We should link donors to companies and lobby registrations. |
| [Parlament.gv.at Open Data](https://www.parlament.gv.at/recherchieren/open-data/) | 25 official datasets (CC BY 4.0) with a JSON API: MPs since 1918, items, resolutions, stenographic protocols, committee memberships, the Parlamentskorrespondenz and more. | This is our backbone. The website does show faction votes, but there is no cross-source view. |
| [OffenesParlament.at](https://offenesparlament.readthedocs.io/) | Open-source parliament data platform from around 2017 with search subscriptions. | Looks dormant. Shows there is interest, but it covered parliament only. |
| [OpenSanctions – Austria](https://www.opensanctions.org/countries/at/) | About 3,100 Austrian PEPs, built mostly from Wikidata and MeineAbgeordneten. | Useful for cross-checking and IDs. Licence is CC BY-NC (non-commercial only). |
| wahlkabine.at and other voting-advice apps | Compare party positions before elections. | Show positions, not actions. |

**Finding:** no Austrian service brings together *votes + money + appearances + statements +
legal matters* with **per-claim citations** and **user-selectable source trust**.
Local politics (Landtage, municipalities) is almost entirely uncovered.

## Other countries (ideas worth copying)

| Project | Country | Idea to adopt |
|---|---|---|
| [abgeordnetenwatch.de](https://www.abgeordnetenwatch.de/api) | DE | Clean open **API (CC0)** with roll-call votes, side jobs and Q&A. Fair-use limits are documented (30 req/min, bulk downloads at night). We publish our API in the same way. |
| [Real-O-Mat](https://netzpolitik.org/2025/real-o-mat-taten-zaehlen-mehr-als-worte/) (FragDenStaat) | DE | A "voting-advice app based on *actual votes*". Our faction votes make an Austrian version possible. |
| [HowTheyVote.eu](https://howtheyvote.eu/about) | EU | Roll-call votes of the European Parliament, open [CSV data](https://github.com/HowTheyVote/data), results within about an hour. We use it for Austrian MEPs. |
| [Abgeordnetenwatch MCP](https://glama.ai/mcp/servers/t5pjdt7p1a) / UK Parliament MCP | DE/UK | Parliament data exposed to AI agents via MCP. **We ship an MCP server too.** |
| TheyWorkForYou (mySociety), GovTrack, OpenSecrets | UK/US | Mature examples: alert subscriptions, speech search, money-in-politics views. |
| LobbyFacts / Integrity Watch EU | EU | Meetings between commissioners and lobbyists. Austria has no equivalent register of ministers' meetings, which is a gap to note. |

## Consequences for the design

1. **Build on official open data first** (Parliament, Rechnungshof, RTR, RIS, EP). This is legally clean and high-trust.
2. **Treat everything as claim + evidence**, so several sources can confirm or contradict the same fact (no project above does this generically).
3. **Partner, don't scrape** curated NGO databases (MeineAbgeordneten, Parteispenden.at).
4. **Expose an API and an MCP server** so journalists, researchers and AI agents can reuse the data.
5. **Local level** is the biggest gap. Start with Wikidata (Landtage are well covered, mayors only partly) and add per-state sources over time.