New search tool brings Senedd and Welsh council records together

Nation.Cymru staff

A new search tool launched today allows people to look up a town, politician or policy and see where it appears in records from the Senedd, Wales’s 22 councils and other public bodies.

Edau brings together information that would otherwise have to be found on separate websites or in documents such as council meeting papers and public body board reports. The prototype will be open to the public until 23 November, after which access will be by invitation while development continues.

A search for a town could bring up council decisions affecting the area, references in the Senedd and information on local charities and their funders. A search for a policy could help users trace a Welsh Government commitment through Senedd proceedings and find related decisions or funding.

The platform was created by Owen Derbyshire and builds on OpenSenedd, an independent project that tracks Senedd activity and links it to commitments in the Welsh Government’s Programme for Government.

“There is an extraordinary amount of information about Wales in the public domain,” Mr Derbyshire said. “The problem is that it is scattered across hundreds of organisations, websites and documents, and it can be very difficult to see how the pieces fit together.”

Edau also draws on OpenCouncil.wales, which tracks meetings, decisions and risks across all 22 local authorities, and OpenEconomy.wales, which gathers information on investment, procurement and supply chains. OpenCharity.wales supplies information about Welsh charities and the organisations and individuals that fund them.

The new platform adds analysis of public bodies’ board papers. It uses AI-assisted tools to process large volumes of publicly available material and connect records from different sources.

“If you are interested in a particular place, person or issue, you should be able to start there and follow the connections across Welsh public life,” Mr Derbyshire said.

“It’s still a prototype, so I’m particularly interested in what people search for, what they find useful and what we’ve missed.”

All four existing services will remain free and publicly accessible once the trial ends. The prototype is available here.