An AI that books appointments, provides certificates and practical information? The technology is ready (and not from today), but until the start of the pandemic these solutions were not even considered by most local administrations.
Today the times seem more mature. For example, the Municipality of Bari has digitized the public relations office by implementing an intelligent booking system developed by QuestIt (a company of the DigitalBox group) in partnership with Exprivia. Citizens can book the services of the Municipality (such as a change of residence, the renewal of an identity card) even from home using a PC, smartphone or tablet. But not only: with the robot you can also book a video call with a municipal official and at that point it is like being in the Municipality, you can ask for information of all kinds and even exchange documents in real time. Today the system is integrated with the environmental, health and hygiene services, with that of urban planning and private construction and the public relations office. Active since February 2, 2021, in the first month of operation the virtual desk satisfied about 400 requests. It is evident that the pandemic has contributed to its success, with citizens stopped at home and the absolute ban on queues and gatherings, but the Municipality of Bari is already considering rendering the service structural and QuestIt is about to close several agreements to bring the virtual assistant in other Apulian and northern Italian municipalities.
“Covid has accelerated the need to digitize services. And there is no turning back from these comforts ”, the company explains. “For the Municipalities it is a considerable relief: virtual assistants in fact are able to perform those repetitive functions that take away time and resources. Municipal officials can thus devote themselves to more complex issues, reducing waiting times for citizens ”.
It works in a similar way but with a more pleasant appearance and voice Caterina, the virtual assistant of the Municipality of Siena who has the appearance of an elegant girl. Caterina answers all questions relating to the demographic service, books appointments but does even more: she can send the citizen the requested document, with legal value. From QuestIt they let it be known that from November 2019 to November 2020 Caterina held 66,000 conversations, sent 5,500 certificates and managed over 400 appointments. The quickest way to get help from Caterina is to provide your Spid data. But Siena belongs to a minority: as it emerged in recent days, in fact, only one municipality out of four allows access to its services through digital identity. This, despite February 28 was the deadline established by law to comply. In a period in which digitization is often the only way to continue interacting, the majority of municipalities have failed, “puncturing” yet another deadline.
A “colleague” of Caterina is Rita: a virtual assistant named in honor of Rita Levi Montalcini who we could define as “daughter of the pandemic”. It was created to meet needs that until the advent of the Coronavirus seemed more suitable for a dystopian science fiction book. Questions such as “can I leave the house for a walk” or “can I move from one municipality to another?” have become very common since the beginning of the pandemic and this was Rita’s function, to go and look in the government faq and provide a quick answer, 24 hours a day without knowing holidays. QuestIt and Exprivia provided it free of charge to about sixty municipalities, almost all of them from Puglia, some from Sicily and some from Calabria, Campania, Emilia Romagna, Umbria, Lombardy and Tuscany.
“We did not give her the voice and face of Caterina just for reasons of time – explains Felice Vitulano, Exprivia’s innovation director – we wanted to provide this service as quickly as possible and two days after the first lockdown we were ready with the first municipalities, then they became about sixty “. The problem is that, after the 90 free days, the municipalities have chosen not to continue using the service. Yet Rita, especially from autumn to today, could still have provided a lot of useful information to citizens. On the other hand, Unlock PA is always active: like Rita, it provides practical information on what can be done and what not according to the latest government decree. Developed by Csi Piemonte, the service has been made available to all Italian municipalities and is already available on the website of the Municipality of Biella.
There are also developments on the vaccine machine front. On the one hand there is the Valle d’Aosta region, which with Usl Valle d’Aosta will allow you to book the vaccine online to protect yourself from Covid-19 thanks to a Ready Go One virtual assistant with QuestIt technology. The same two companies also developed Pascalino: a robot at the service of the patients of the Pascale cancer institute in Naples. It helps them understand how to access the facility while complying with anti-Covid regulations, gives practical information on how to prepare for an exam and, in the coming weeks, will also be able to do a pre-triage: it will interrogate the potential patient trying to understand if it is really the case to go to the emergency room or, instead, to stay at home or call only the general practitioner.
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