Answers from the council's own documents, on the council's own servers.

The problem

Finding the right policy, the relevant committee decision or the history of a case meant searching several systems and reading long documents to find one paragraph. Officers knew the answer existed. Finding it took time they did not have.

Public AI services were not an option. Resident data could not leave the council's control, and any answer used in a decision had to be traceable to a source.

What we built

A document assistant that runs on the council's own servers, using an open-weight model that never calls out to the internet.

• It indexes the council's document stores: policies, minutes, planning records and case files, respecting the permissions each officer already has.
• An officer asks a question in plain language. The assistant answers from the documents and cites the page it used, with a link to open it.
• If the documents do not contain an answer, it says so rather than guessing.

We wrote the architecture, data flow and controls up for the council's information governance and security teams, who reviewed and accepted it before it went live.

Controls

• Fully on-premise. Model, index and logs all run inside the council's network. There are no external calls.
• Cited answers only. Every answer shows its source. Officers check the source before relying on it.
• Permissions follow the user. The assistant can only see what the officer asking could already see.
• Query log retained. Questions and answers are logged to the council's records schedule and can be produced on request.
• No training on council data. The model is used as supplied and never fine-tuned on resident information.
• Accessibility. The interface meets WCAG 2.2 AA.

Outcome

Officers find the relevant document and the relevant section in one step, and open the source to confirm it. The assistant is used for policy questions, committee history and case background, and is clear about the limits of what it has read.

The council's information governance team reviewed the system on their own terms and accepted it. The council's IT team runs it, with our monitoring and monthly reporting behind them.