OpenBesluitvorming

OpenBesluitvorming is the successor to Open Raadsinformatie and provides access to the same type of information for the same levels of government. The platform was developed by Ontola and can be found at openbesluitvorming.nl .

It adds two features that its predecessor did not have: motions recorded with the vote of each individual member, and recordings of meetings with a transcript.

What’s inside

Recorded on 13 September 2026 by taking a measurement on the platform itself:

• 5,554,063 documents, compared with 5,146,062 on 12 August 2026;
• 329 organisations: 307 municipalities, 13 water authorities and 8 provinces;
• motions with voting records, and meeting recordings with transcripts.

How it’s structured

flowchart TD
    subgraph LEV["Suppliers"]
        IB["iBabs, 167 sources"]
        NB["Notubiz, 129 sources"]
        GO["GemeenteOplossingen, 34"]
        PA["Parlaeus, 4"]
    end

    LEV --> EX["Standardisation<br/>towards a single data model"]
    EX --> CD["Change detection<br/>any change<br/>is an event"]
    CD --> QW[("Search index")]
    EX --> S3[("Object storage<br/>originals, text,<br/>page images")]
    BB["BesluitBron"] --> API["Application API<br/>OpenBesluitvorming. nl/api"]
    API --> QW
    API --> S3

The platform records every change as an event and indexes those events. This means that not only can you see what is currently there, but also that something has been changed.

Strengths

• Motions, with details of how each member voted. In local government, this information is rarely available centrally;
• Recordings of meetings with a transcript, making the spoken word searchable;
• An application API rather than an exposed search engine. This makes the contract more stable than its predecessor;
• Searching for a phrase. Two or more words enclosed in double quotation marks must appear consecutively and in that order. This has been the case since 16 August 2026; before that, quotation marks had no effect.

Search by phrase

Words without quotation marks are combined using ‘AND’. They may appear on different pages, and the search result does not have to relate to the combination. Two or more words enclosed in double quotation marks must appear consecutively and in that order.

Use quotation marks for set phrases, quotations or addresses. Do not use them for a topic: in that case, it is better to use separate words, as a text may refer to the same topic using different wording.

There is a significant difference depending on the address. Measured on 16 August 2026, nationwide:

Of those 24 documents, exactly one appeared in the first 100 individual hits. The other 99 were included because the number 4 appeared somewhere as a page number, an article number or a measurement. That is why BesluitBron automatically combines a street name with a house number to form a phrase, even if you do not use quotation marks. The answer states this at query_sent and at more_to_find, so you can reverse the process by rephrasing the query itself.

Two things to bear in mind:

• A single word in quotation marks is not a phrase, but an ordinary word. The platform does, however, apply stricter criteria in such cases: the inclusion of related words is omitted;
• A phrase searches the title and the text, not the classification of an article.

This works from version 1.3.25 onwards. Up to and including version 1.3.24, quotation marks were ignored and the words were searched for individually.

Restrictions

• The total is not always exact. If the entire collection of search results fits within the scope of the platform’s search, the total is a count. If it does not, it is an estimate. BesluitBron reports both and adds ‘total_is_exact’ (approximate total), see Zoekprecisie. The search screen displays ‘approximately’ when an estimate is given. This has been the case since version 1.3.91. Up to and including version 1.3.90, BesluitBron omitted the estimate because the platform would then return a different figure for each query; since 6 September 2026, the platform has been returning the same figure, rounded to three decimal places;
• There is a request limit of 60 weighted units per minute, enforced by the platform itself. A search query costs one unit, plus one unit for every 250 rows beyond the first 24. BesluitBron adheres to this limit and waits rather than continuing to send requests. The platform reduced this rate on 26 August 2026; prior to that, every 24 rows cost one unit, meaning BesluitBron retrieved less data per minute;
• The national parliament is not included, just as it was not in the previous version. The four suppliers this platform draws on are not used by the Tweede Kamer;
• The coverage is not the same as that of Open Raadsinformatie: 329 organisations compared with 331 sources. If you want to be sure that a particular municipality is included, you can check this at list_sources;
• Even an organ that is collected may still be missing parts. The platform compares itself with the supplier of each organ on a weekly basis. On 13 September 2026, 155 of the 330 organs compared were missing something, and in the case of one organ, 303 of the 311 parts from the past year were missing. The Laadstatus shows this comparison for each organ.

Address and tools

Address: https://besluitbron.nl/mcp/openbesluitvorming/v1. The old address without /v1 will remain accessible.

• list_sources: the affiliated organisations, by type;
• corpus_stats: the size of the corpus, emphasising that the figures are approximate;
• search_documents: search the documents. Enclose two or more words in double quotation marks to search for them as a phrase. A street name with a house number is automatically treated as a phrase, and the result shows what was searched for at query_sent;
• get_document: a single document containing its text;
• get_meeting: one meeting with its agenda;
• upcoming_meetings: the scheduled meetings;
• find_motions: search for motions, including their proposers and the results;
• get_motion: one motion, with the voting records included;
• topic_timeline: the development of a topic over time;
• find_recordings: recordings of meetings;
• get_recording: a single recording containing the transcribed text, which makes the spoken word searchable;
• list_platform_calls: the calls to the platform in this session.

In addition, list_capabilities.

Where to find this platform

These addresses belong to the organisation behind this source and not to BesluitBron. Anyone who finds an error in the data or in this source’s API should report it there:

• Report a bug: the OpenBesluitvorming issues on GitHub ;
• Read the API: API.md ;
• Search for yourself on the source website: OpenBesluitvorming.nl .

This is the source where reports have so far been dealt with most quickly: seven of the eight issues reported by BesluitBron in August 2026 were resolved within a few days.

These addresses were checked on 18 August 2026. No email address has been included deliberately: where a party publishes only an address, BesluitBron refers to the page on which that address appears.

What this source is suitable for

For two questions that no other local source answers: how did each councillor vote, and what was said during the meeting? For both of these, BesluitBron is the only local source of information.

What it is not for

For an exact figure on a broad topic. A broad query returns more results than the platform can process, so the total is an estimate. A narrow query, however, does return an exact figure: a phrase, a single organisation or a single period is usually sufficient. If you need an exact figure on a broad topic, use Open Raadsinformatie.

Current situation, as of August 2026

This is the follow-up to Open Raadsinformatie and does include new material. Of the 316 documents viewed on 16 August 2026, the most recent harvest stamps were dated up to 15 August.

As with its predecessor, the current status varies by body. Since 16 August 2026, this platform has been publishing its own data status for all bodies simultaneously, and the Laadstatus retrieves this in a single call. This specifies, for each body, whether the platform still retrieves its data, which source system underpins it, and whether an organisation has been dissolved. Up to and including version 1.3.22, retrieving this status required one call per organisation and was spread over four hours.

This means that a fault in a single source system is also flagged as a fault. In August 2026, 161 of the 330 organisations received no new data – not for 161 separate reasons, but because iBabs blocked the address from which the platform retrieves data.

list_sources displays the date for each body once the list has been narrowed down to a maximum of eight bodies. That tool does, however, make one call per body, because it answers a slightly different question: it searches for the most recent meeting that has already taken place, whereas the load status provides the latest known date, even if that date is yet to come.

Please note when reading these dates: they refer to the meeting and not to the time of harvest. During a recess, the latest meeting date therefore automatically falls behind, without anything coming to a standstill.