AI-native, fully accountable committee management for British councils.
Faster to run, easier to govern.
Run your committees more efficiently. Let AI do the tedious work, keep every change on the record, and put your time into governance and improving your council’s operations.
Includes a fullconstitution managementsystem!
- For Democratic ServicesSpeed up the process, without losing control.
- For Directors, officers and cabinetKnow what is yours, what it is waiting on, and when it is due.
- For Monitoring OfficersKeep every statutory deadline, and see where you stand.
- For Chief executives and digital leadsGovern the AI your officers are already using.
For Democratic Services
Speed up the process, without losing control
AI handles routine review, drafting and chasing. Workflows and permissions are completely customisable and every action anyone takes is audited and reversible.
Much faster, end to end
Fully customisable workflows, with agents to speed up review and drafting at every step. Parallel workflows and automatic handoffs and chasing speed up the process, and undoable audit logs keep you in control.
Minutes drafted from the transcript
Store the recording’s transcript and a first draft of the minutes is written in your house style, with attendance and decisions filled in for you to check. You review, confirm and publish in one click.
Granular permissions
Every action can be scoped to individuals, roles or groups: who may draft, sign off, publish or see exempt papers. We generate that scheme for you from your constitution, which lives in the same system, so it matches your scheme of delegation from day one.
“Used appropriately, AI can reduce time spent on repetitive administrative tasks and free officers to focus on higher-value work requiring professional judgement and relationship management. … The challenge for officers is therefore not simply whether to use AI, but how to use it safely and responsibly.”
For directors, officers and cabinet
Everything you need in one place
Committee systems are sold to Democratic Services, and tend to poorly serve other users. The officer writing reports, the directors who are responsible for ensuring their departments stay on track and the cabinet members who need to prepare for meetings end up relying on emails, passing around Word documents and frequent support from Democratic Services. CivicOS provides first-class support for these roles, improving coordination across the whole council.
Reporting officers
My reports
The key items for reporting officers are their own reports: those that are in progress, those that are upcoming and those that they wrote in the past. CivicOS makes all of that easy to find, and speeds up the drafting process with templates, review tools and customisable AI agents that help you adhere to guidance.
Directors of services
Your department’s week
For Directors of Service, the focus is on planning and monitoring. Your home page focuses on what your department is doing this week, what is overdue, and what is coming over the next quarter, and keeps you in control.
Cabinet members and their support officers
The briefing
Cabinet members need to know what they are deciding on, and to be able to prepare speaking notes beforehand. CivicOS provides a customised view and private agents, allowing you to rapidly interrogate the pack, draft arguments and request further information.
Ask the packAgent · sees the papers only
- You
What alternatives to the 4.2% uplift were considered, and why were they rejected?
- Agent
The report weighs three options in section 5:
- No uplift. Rejected: 11 of 38 providers said they would hand back contracts (para 5.3).
- Uplift at CPI, 3.1%. Rejected: below the assessed cost of care, leaving a £0.6m gap (para 5.6).
- 4.2%, recommended. Matches the cost-of-care exercise; growth is already in the MTFS (para 5.8).
Not considered: a differentiated rate by care type, which Health Scrutiny asked for in June (minute 14).
Sources: Officer report · Appendix B · Health Scrutiny minutes, 3 June
My notesPrivate to you
Argument for Cabinet
Support the 4.2% uplift. The cost-of-care exercise justifies the headline figure (para 5.8), and no uplift puts 11 contracts at risk (para 5.3).
But ask officers to come back in January with a differentiated rate by care type. Scrutiny asked for this in June and the report does not answer it. We should not let it wait for next year’s round.
For Monitoring Officers
Keep every statutory deadline, and see where you stand
Don’t wait until you’re audited to find out how often your team is missing deadlines. CivicOS monitors performance actively and gives you the chance to improve it before it causes problems.
Enforce the deadlines as you work
Statutory notice periods are enforced as the work is done rather than checked afterwards. A key decision cannot reach your agenda before its notice period has run. A late pack is flagged before it goes. Exempt items stay out of your public record by default.
Spot failures before an auditor does
The Governance page shows the year by role: what is on time, what needs attention, and which meeting or decision is at fault. Every list can be exported for the annual report or an auditor.
The legislation we support
- 1972Local Government Act, Part VA and Schedule 12A
- 1985Local Government (Access to Information) Act
- 2000Local Government Act: executive arrangements and scrutiny
- 2011Localism Act: standards and interests
- 2012Executive Arrangements (Meetings and Access to Information) Regulations
- 2014Openness of Local Government Bodies Regulations
- 2018Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations
- 2026English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act
For chief executives and digital leads
Put the AI your officers already use on the record
Officers are already drafting reports and minutes with AI, off-system and unlogged, sometimes with exempt material. In CivicOS that work happens inside the record, where every change is attributed, applied by a named officer and reversible.
- 14:02AgentDrafting assistant rewrote the options appraisal, paras 4.2–4.6Undo
- 14:19PersonA. Khan, Legal, completed sign-offUndo
- 15:31PersonS. Reeves, Democratic Services, undid the 14:02 changeUndone
The assistant proposes; an officer applies
The drafting assistant does not write into a paper directly. It proposes a change, the officer sees the difference, and applies or rejects it.
A named person on every step
An agent can do the work on a sign-off step, but a named officer always holds the authority to complete it. No step is finished by a machine alone.
Attributed and reversible
Every change records who or what made it, through which channel, and why. An undo is a new entry in the log, so history is never rewritten.
The practicalities
- Sign-in
- One login across CivicOS products, with per-council roles for draft, publish and user admin.
- Broadcasts
- Public-i, Microsoft Teams, YouTube or CivicOS hosting, one or several on the same meeting.
- Public record
- Open without sign-in, published as HTML under the Open Government Licence, with exempt items and drafts omitted.
Built and owned in the UK
Made in the UK, for British councils
OCN Technology is a UK company. The people who design and build CivicOS live and work in the UK, vote for their local council, and already publish the public record of more than 170 councils through Open Council Network.
- Company
- OCN Technology Ltd, a UK limited company
- Built by
- A UK team, in the UK
- Decisions about the product are made in the UK, by people you can meet, under UK law and UK procurement rules.
- When the law changes, we make the change ourselves. s.65 of the 2026 Act took members’ home addresses off the public register on 29 June 2026; CivicOS already kept them off.
- One UK supplier for the constitution, the committee cycle and the public record, with the same sign-in, design and audit trail across all three.
See it on your data, risk free
You can trial OCN at no cost, and with no risk. We run it alongside your current system, and only bill when your existing contract ends.
Talk to us about a pilot