What government is doing
Track every government update
Government publishes something like 150 documents a day, spread across a hundred websites. Almost none of them are about you. Say what your organisation does and this finds the ones that are.
This tool brings together consultations, announcements, policy papers, guidance and transparency releases into a single, searchable database.
— of the — documents in these five themes are on your subject — — of everything government published.
The five themes above are the ones this page takes apart. This section holds seventeen sources in all — here is the rest of it, and where to read each one.
Policy by policy
One subject at a time.
One row per policy instead of per body, so you can follow a single subject across the themes — where the themes allow it, which is almost nowhere. Of — policies here, — appear in more than one theme.
These are suggestions from matching words, not from reading the documents. Judge them yourself.
— nothing published at that stage ■□□□□ which of the five stages this policy reached Rows are one policy, not one document.
| 00Body | 00Themes | 01Consultationsopen or run this year | 02Announcementssince — | 03Policy papersdated 2026 | 04Guidancenew this year | 05Transparencynew this year |
|---|
No body matches that filter.
| 00Policy | 00Themes | 01Asksconsultation | 02Announcesannouncement | 03Promisespolicy paper | 04Instructsguidance | 05Accountstransparency |
|---|
No policy matches that filter.
publishes into this theme does not appear — nothing in that theme for this body
What the empty cells are telling you.
— of the — bodies here appear in exactly one theme. Only — appear in all five, and those — account for — of every document on this page. Most of the long tail is small agencies and arm's-length bodies that publish their spending figures and nothing else.
The widest theme is —, with — bodies in it. The narrowest is —, with — — — times fewer. Publishing a spending return is something almost every public body does. Running a consultation is not.
And nothing joins the rows up. A consultation carries no reference to the policy paper that answers it, and a piece of guidance carries no reference to the consultation that preceded it. Following one policy across these five themes means reading the titles.
What is hidden while a description is applied. Everything on this page is counted over documents on your subject — except the re-dating figures, which are gone rather than narrowed. GOV.UK reports how many documents carry a 2026 date but does not hand over the older ones behind that count, so there is no honest way to say how many of them are on your subject. Clear the description to get them back.
How the policies were joined. None of the five themes carries an identifier that appears in another one, so the only join available is the titles. Four guards keep it honest: the wording has to overlap (Jaccard 0.5, or 0.4 when the two documents share a publishing body); at least two words have to be shared; at least one shared word has to be distinctive, meaning it appears in eight titles or fewer across all five themes; and the rarest word of the title has to be one of the shared ones, with two titles naming different years treated as different documents. A document links only to an earlier theme in the chain, never to its own. Over — records that leaves fewer than a hundred joins. The rules are in govintel-page.js; under-linking is the deliberate error.
How the bodies were matched. All five themes are built from GOV.UK's own APIs, so they use GOV.UK's own organisation titles and match on the title itself — trimmed, because the feed occasionally carries a trailing space. That is the difference from Whether it worked, whose four sources come from four different publishers and need a hand-kept list of spellings. Nothing here is hand-matched, and no body is folded into a successor department: bodies that have since closed keep their own row, because merging them would invent a history the themes do not contain.
Consultations —, read — Announcements —, read — Policy papers —, read — Guidance —, read — Transparency —, read —
The cycle
Where the volume goes.
Read left to right, this is a policy's public life: the question, the announcement, the promise, the instruction, the account. The volume is nowhere near evenly spread across it.
-
Stage 01 · asking
The question
A consultation or call for evidence: a proposal put out with a closing date, and usually the documents you would need to answer it properly.
—consultations open now or run this year on your subject
- — are open and can still be answered
- — have had an outcome published
- — have closed with nothing published back yet
- — went out with no document attached at all
— have closed without an answer being published.
— of every consultation government has run is on your subject.
-
Stage 02 · announcing
The announcement
The daily feed — press releases, news stories, speeches and regulatory decisions. Government talking about what it has just done, rather than what it plans.
—announcements since — on your subject
- — press releases and — news stories
- — are decisions and rulings rather than news
- — are speeches
- from — bodies, across — days
— announcements a day, every day, and the theme never drops one.
— of what government announced is on your subject.
-
Stage 03 · promising
The commitment
A policy paper is government's own statement of what it intends to do. It is the nearest thing in the system to a promise with a date attached.
—policy papers carrying a 2026 date on your subject
- — were first published this year
- — are older papers re-dated, the oldest from —
- — have never been changed since the day they went up
- — bodies have published one
— of this year's policy papers are older papers re-stamped.
— of this year’s policy papers are on your subject.
-
Stage 04 · instructing
The instruction
Guidance and regulation is the end of the line: the document that lands on somebody's desk and tells them what to do. Nothing is consulted on at this stage. It is simply published.
—pieces of guidance first published this year on your subject
- — documents carry a 2026 date, so — are older ones re-dated
- — plain guidance, — detailed guides, — notices — — types in all
- — have been amended at least once since publication
- the busiest single body, —, accounts for —
— of what this year's feed carries was first published in an earlier year.
— of this year’s new guidance is on your subject.
-
Stage 05 · accounting
The account
The record of government's own running: spending, salaries, board papers, and the answers it gave to people who asked. The only stage anyone outside government can start.
—transparency and freedom of information releases first published this year on your subject
- — are transparency data, — corporate reports
- — are answers to a freedom of information request
- — carry a 2026 date, so — are older releases re-dated
- — bodies appear — the widest spread of the five
— of the record was published because somebody asked for it.
— of this year’s disclosure is on your subject.
The honest caveat. The five themes do not cover the same window. Consultations are everything open now plus everything that closed or reported this year; announcements run from — only; guidance and transparency releases are what GOV.UK records as first published in 2026, and policy papers are everything carrying a 2026 date, re-dated ones included. So the columns below are counts inside each theme's own window, not a like-for-like race. They are still the only place these five sit side by side.
Procurement
What government is buying.
Find a Tender, the UK’s procurement register, on a rolling ninety days — about 26,000 notices from 2,500 buyers. Everything above tells you what government is thinking; this is the part you can win, and it now has a page of its own.