FollowTheFunds · A Civic Reading

Public money. Your money. Finally, the full picture.

We translate Austria's public spending data into stories everyone can understand.

§ 01 · The Problem

The data exists — but who can read it?

Public spending data is technically available — and practically invisible. It hides in spreadsheets, scanned PDFs, and bureaucratic formats designed for accountants, not citizens. Hard to access, harder to understand, almost impossible to compare across years.

§ 02 · The Cost

When data stays invisible, misinformation fills the gap.

Narratives blaming migrants for draining welfare. Claims about defense spending tied to neutrality. Myths spread fastest where the numbers are hardest to find. A democracy can't argue honestly about money it can't see.

§ 03 · What we do

A newsroom's standards. A statistician's tools.

Accessible

We surface data that's technically public but practically hidden — pulled from BMF, Statistik Austria, AMS and Rechnungshof, in one place.

Digestible

Charts, plain language, and context — not raw numbers. Inflation-adjusted, translated, and explained line by line.

Transparent

Neutral, not pursuing a hidden agenda. Every figure carries a source. Every assumption is labeled. No ads, no donors, no spin.

Data always tells a story. We help it tell the accurate one.

— The FollowTheFunds Editorial
§ 04 · Why it matters

Myths spread fast. Numbers, finally, can catch up.

Two of the loudest claims in Austrian political discourse — about welfare and about defense — rest on figures most people have never actually seen. Here is what the budget says.

Myth

Migrants drain the welfare system.

Data

Most social spending — pensions, healthcare, family benefits — flows to the long-resident population. Asylum and integration costs are a small slice of the social budget; see the breakdown in our migration analysis.

Open migration analysis
Myth

Austria barely spends on defense — that's neutrality.

Data

The defense line has grown materially since 2022. Neutrality describes a foreign policy, not a fixed budget share. See the actual trajectory in the Explorer.

Open the Explorer
§ 05 · Begin

Ready to see where the money goes?

No tracking · No ads · No newsletter — yet