Julia, Roma entra in chat: easier services for residents ma la burocrazia non si batte solo con un’app

The certificate arrives on your phone, a pothole is reported with a photograph, and you ask about the school lunch menu as you would ask another parent. Julia, Rome Capital’s virtual assistant, is trying to become more than a digital guide. Version 3.0, presented on 24 October at Maker Faire, introduces an Android and iOS app and opens access to thirty municipal services. The change is tangible: not just answering questions, but helping residents obtain documents and start applications. The challenge now is to show that the administration can match the speed of a virtual conversation. Julia, or rather its application, covers sixteen civil registry services, seven school services and seven resident assistance services. Users can download certificates that do not require stamp duty, check nursery and preschool admission rankings, verify contribution fees, report problems and find out whether a car has been towed. Personal services require identification using Spid, Cie or Cns; for information, users can simply start a conversation. But how does Julia work? Certificates that do not require stamp duty arrive in the chat; those requiring stamp duty involve a switch to the portal. For more complex tasks, such as a change of residence or registration for school transport, Julia guides users towards municipal procedures. This is no minor detail: presenting everything as immediately achievable within the app would risk raising expectations beyond its actual capabilities.

The most compelling benefit is saving residents the hunt for the right webpage. According to City Hall figures, obtaining a certificate goes from around four minutes and eight steps to thirty seconds. This is more than a launch presentation promise: HDblog reported obtaining a birth certificate in seconds after authenticating with Spid. It is a limited test, not a comprehensive assessment, but it documents a useful result. After all, this is precisely what AI enables, and failing to seize these opportunities, as other countries are doing, would be foolish.

On paper, the choices that make access more flexible also work: voice interaction, more than eighty languages, continuity between portal and app conversations, and notifications about reports. To report a problem, users can attach photographs and their location and receive a case number. The official website also provides institutional sources and links for further information: a preferable foundation to answers whose origins cannot be traced. In short, Julia shows that it knows how to do its job.

The first issue is, of course, reliability. An estimate by the city’s technical team puts the error rate at around 5%. Without a public methodology and a distinction between types of answers, however, this figure does not allow the risk of each service to be measured. An inaccurate tourist recommendation and incorrect guidance about an application do not carry the same weight. Public assessments, prompt corrections and a clearly identifiable route to a human operator are needed when the assistant cannot answer. Because no system is infallible.

The second issue concerns results. According to the administration, a report can be opened in around fifty seconds, compared with two to six minutes by telephone. Good, but reporting a broken street lamp in the app does not mean repairing it. The real breakthrough, inveterate optimists that we are, would be to publish response times, completed interventions and reopened cases too: measuring the service, not just the speed of the chat. It can certainly be done, at least in principle. Finally, accessibility and transparency. Voice and translation are opportunities, not proof that every resident can complete a procedure. Testing is needed with older people, people with disabilities and users unfamiliar with digital tools, while retaining human alternatives and the warmth and understanding of a friendly voice. And since the app stores conversations and uses location with consent, explanations about data, retention and deletion must be as understandable as the assistant’s answers. Julia can become a good gateway to the municipality. Provided that the City Hall offices behind that door work. In short, an incentive, but also a challenge to meet every day.