How Southwark Council uses AI and open source software to transform PDF Publishing in Drupal

Hear directly from the team behind an award-winning AI solution built for local government. What does genuinely useful AI in public services look like? Not a concept, not a pilot, but a working solution that saves hours of manual work, improves accessibility, and puts better content in front of citizens faster.

Southwark Council's AI-powered PDF importer for Drupal is exactly that, and it won the prestigious Digital Leaders AI Impact Award 2026.

Host: James Hall, Product Lead for Websites at Everyone TV
Guest: Angie Forson, Web and Digital Program Lead at Southwark Council

Download LocalGov Publications Importer:  https://www.drupal.org/project/localg...
Learn more about Drupal AI: https://www.drupal.org/ai

More about the problem solved

Manual PDF conversion has long been one of the most time-consuming tasks facing council web teams. Converting a single document can take hours. Multiply that across thousands of PDFs and the burden becomes significant, both in staff time and in the delay it creates before citizens can access accurate, accessible information.

The Southwark team, working with their partners at Chicken, built an AI-powered importer for the LocalGov Drupal Publication Module that reduces that process to minutes, often under one minute.

How it works

Each PDF passes through a three-step pipeline:

  • Extract - a PDF parser pulls the raw content from the document
  • Transform - AI converts it to properly structured, accessible HTML with logical pagination
  • Save - clean HTML pages are ready to review and publish directly in Drupal

The result is an HTML representation of the PDF content, saved into a Drupal Publication and ready for review before going live. Every import is logged, so errors can be identified and resolved efficiently.

The module uses a plugin architecture, meaning each step in the pipeline can be swapped out. Councils can use different extractors, AI models, or output to different Drupal content types, making the solution adaptable to a wide range of content and operational requirements.

Built the right way

The team delivered this project with an agile, user-centred approach, continuously refining requirements to ensure the tool meets real user needs rather than simply ticking a technical specification.

"This project is a great example of AI working alongside and empowering content creators, and Drupal as a platform supports this really well." - Farez Rahman, Drupal Developer

"I'm excited about the impact this product will have, not just for our users, but also in transforming how we design, build, and create content internally. We're shaping a future where services start with HTML-first thinking." - Evelyn Francourt, User Experience Lead

Why this matters beyond Southwark

Local government teams across the country face the same challenge. This solution, built on open source Drupal and the LocalGov Drupal ecosystem, is designed to be shared, not kept in one place.

If your organisation publishes PDFs, manages large volumes of content, or is exploring where AI can deliver practical value without unnecessary complexity, this webinar is for you.