The product
OpenCity AI Chatbot is a semantic search tool that allows users to start a conversation with the public authority’s website and get answers to their information needs.
Users review the privacy policy and can freely interact with the chatbot to find answers to their needs. The chatbot provides answers within the authority’s knowledge domain, using data from the website collected through a daily scraping process scheduled during nighttime hours. It also provides frequently asked questions to immediately guide users.
Overall, the chatbot represents a more natural way to browse the website, based on natural language and conversation.
How it works
The OpenCity chatbot is a product based on generative AI released under an open source license, distributed through OpenCity Italia’s ACN-qualified SaaS cloud infrastructure.
Its technological core is based on a RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) architecture. Unlike systems based solely on generic artificial intelligence, this approach ensures that every answer is anchored exclusively to certain and verified data. The solution is agnostic with respect to the language model used and adopts the MCP protocol to ensure interoperability with other solutions from the authority or third parties.
When the user interacts with the chatbot, the request is sent to the open source OpenCity AI component which processes and enriches it, analyzing the specific website content before sending it to an LLM via API. The LLM only handles giving a conversational form to the retrieved information.
To learn more, read the complete documentation.
- Design: mobile-first conversational interface, always available to users on every page of the website by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner
- Configuration: following OpenCity’s setup, it can be easily activated by the authority by including a script on their website
- Automatic updates: the chatbot updates daily by indexing newly produced content
Benefits
OpenCity AI Chatbot improves the relationship with citizens and reduces the need to call the municipality:
- Quality of answers, guaranteed by specific training and hundreds of tests based on real and specific information needs of citizens
- Content quality control for the authority. We use AI to identify information gaps on the authority’s websites and provide a report with precise recommendations
- All answers in a single tool available to citizens, even when information is spread across different websites
- Responds in all languages. A quick solution to the lack of a multilingual website, making the authority even more inclusive
Better than a search engine
The chatbot is a more effective and natural alternative to website navigation, particularly compared to using the site’s search engine. The system correctly processes requests even when:
- the question contains grammatical or typing errors
- the user uses common words instead of the authority’s terminology (e.g., “deaths” instead of “deceased”)
- there is no precise answer on the site, despite many pages on the topic
- a logical connection is needed to understand that the solution to a problem is a specific service (e.g., from “pothole problem” to “report issues”)
Better than a generic AI system
ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek are generic LLMs that can use a search engine to supplement the information they were explicitly trained on. The main advantages of the chatbot are:
- Greater accuracy of semantic search on internal data compared to text-based or keyword search from a generic search engine
- Lower risk of hallucinations: a general LLM can more easily fall back on its general knowledge if the search doesn’t provide precise results; the chatbot instead, when it doesn’t find reliable information, invites users to contact the authority directly
Transparency and privacy
- Before starting the conversation, users review the privacy policy, which explains data processing methods
- OpenCity AI anonymizes data before passing it to an external system to prevent personal data processing by an LLM
- The chatbot does not answer questions unrelated to website content and the authority’s institutional mission: when users request information not available on the website, the chatbot invites them to contact the authority directly
Like any technology, AI can make mistakes: in accordance with technological principles for AI use, users are informed of this possibility and invited, in case of doubt, to contact the authority.
Regulatory compliance
Artificial intelligence technologies designed in compliance with standards for public sector transformation:
- Security, guaranteed by ISO 27001 certification and OpenCity Italia’s ACN qualification
- Privacy, strict GDPR compliance and anonymization of any personal data sent to LLMs
- Open source. The preferred choice according to technical rules for software procurement in public administration
- Interoperability. Adoption of open standards (MCP)
- User experience. Design guidelines and accessibility with Designers Italia UI kit adoption
- AI technical rules in public administration. Compliance with Law 132/2025 and AI ACT (European AI Regulation)
Answer quality and testing
OpenCity Chatbot was released after an extensive testing process conducted on Italian public authority websites. Results quality is constantly analyzed across four dimensions:
- Correctness: information provided is free of factual errors, verifiable, up-to-date and accurate
- Relevance to the question: the chatbot stays focused on the user’s request, avoiding unnecessary digressions
- Completeness: comprehensive answers covering all relevant aspects of the query
- Conciseness: direct and essential communication, without redundancies
Before going to production, OpenCity produces an analysis report simulating dozens of questions and reporting necessary improvements to the authority. This way, the authority gets precise guidance on where to improve their website content.