The Complete Guide to Using AI in the Government Industry in San Marino in 2025

Small, efficient administrations like San Marino's can gain outsized benefits from pragmatic AI: governments worldwide are already using AI to automate routine work, boost citizen support and deliver more personalized services - 61 percent of consumers now expect that level of personalization (Zendesk AI in Government report) - while benchmarking tools like the Government AI Readiness Index (Oxford Insights) show how to align strategy, data and governance.

For San Marino this means pairing data modernization and zero‑trust cybersecurity with clear accountability (think algorithmic impact assessments and privacy monitoring) so a 24/7 virtual desk can answer simple permit questions in seconds while staff handle complex cases.

Closing the trust and productivity gaps highlighted in recent public‑sector studies starts with practical workforce upskilling: the AI Essentials for Work bootcamp teaches non‑technical civil servants how to use AI tools, write effective prompts, and apply AI across government functions in a 15‑week, hands‑on program (syllabus: AI Essentials for Work syllabus (Nucamp)), turning policy into reliable citizen outcomes.

Regulatory landscape and legal basics in San Marino are straightforward but active: as of May 2025 the Republic has no dedicated national AI statute, yet it has intentionally aligned existing safeguards with international standards to manage risk while public services experiment with AI (summary: Law Gratis on San Marino).

Key moves include signing the Council of Europe's Framework Convention on AI and Human Rights and ratifying the modernized Convention 108+ (privacy), while Law No.

171 (21 December 2018) already anchors strong personal‑data protections - including penalties up to €10 million or 4% of global turnover - and a cybersecurity posture harmonized with EU rules like the GDPR and Digital Services Act.

For government planners the practical path is clear: convert these international commitments into operational steps - robust DPIAs/Algorithmic Impact Assessments, vendor contract clauses, human‑oversight gates and incident logging - so that deployment is legal as well as useful.

That approach mirrors wider guidance on treating AI governance as a core compliance function and on adopting the EU AI Act's risk‑based mindset for procurement and public services (see EU AI Act primer from A‑LIGN).

Picture this: one compact, well‑documented impact assessment can shield citizens' rights across the whole administration while keeping services fast and accountable.

San Marino's signature on the Council of Europe Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence signals a practical commitment to an international baseline that binds AI use to human rights, democracy and the rule of law; the treaty - available from the Council of Europe - covers AI across the entire lifecycle and asks states to translate principles into concrete checks like iterative risk and impact assessments, accessible remedies, and transparency measures (for example: notifying people they are interacting with an AI, not a human) so citizens can challenge automated decisions (read the full Convention).

That international frame gives San Marino a ready-made playbook: adopt the Convention's core principles (human dignity, equality and non‑discrimination, privacy and data protection, transparency and oversight, accountability, reliability and safe innovation), apply proportional safeguards for public‑sector uses and vendors acting on government behalf, and participate in the treaty's follow‑up through the Conference of the Parties - practical steps that turn high‑level norms into operational guardrails without slowing useful services.

For planners in San Marino, the real “so what” is simple: a short set of national declarations and one clear risk‑assessment routine can align local procurement, public‑service design and citizen remedies with a fast‑emerging European standard (see a campaign summary from CAIDP for context).

Data protection and cybersecurity are mission‑critical when deploying AI in San Marino: the country's Law No. 171 of 21 December 2018 establishes a GDPR‑style legal framework for collection, processing and transfer of personal data and sets clear duties for controllers and processors (see a practical summary of San Marino's law), while supervisory power rests with the national Data Protection Authority and carries heavy sanctions - administrative fines up to €10 million or, for undertakings, up to 4% of global turnover, plus orders to suspend processing.

For government AI projects this translates into concrete steps: document lawful bases, build DPIAs for high‑risk systems, embed privacy‑by‑design and secure data flows, and require vendor guarantees and incident logging so that automated decisions remain explainable and reviewable.

The citizen protections are robust (access, rectification, erasure, portability, objection and limits on automated profiling), so a single overlooked data flow can quickly become an operational and reputational crisis - treat compliance as part of system design, not an afterthought (legal primer on GDPR fines).

“The right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her.”

San Marino is quietly building the human infrastructure needed to use AI responsibly: the University of San Marino's event calendar already features focused gatherings such as ASA 2025 -

Data, Statistics and AI for the Well‑Being of People and Organizations

(17–19 Sep 2025) that put academic rigour and public‑sector relevance in the same room, while prior workshops like the TDA labs – Artificial Intelligence in Education Lab and the

Innovate Responsibly – Dialogues on Artificial Intelligence and Ethics

symposium show a steady commitment to ethics and pedagogy (University of San Marino events and academic AI events).

Local capacity can be amplified by tapping broader programmes and networks - from listings of AI conferences in San Marino to international labs like the Newmark J‑School's AI Journalism Labs - which offer short, practical cohorts on ethics, tools and governance that civil servants and journalists can join to sharpen oversight skills.

The practical payoff is immediate: a national stack of recurring symposia and short labs makes it possible to train a new cohort of ethics‑aware practitioners quickly, so a minister or procurement officer can attend a three‑day symposium and return with concrete evaluation questions for vendors rather than abstract worries about bias.

San Marino's calendar now includes a must‑attend, policy‑focused gathering: ASA 2025 - Data, Statistics and AI for the Well‑Being of People and Organizations (17–19 September 2025) - a mixed on‑site/web scientific conference hosted by the University of the Republic of San Marino with ASA and ISTAT that aims to connect statisticians, data scientists and public servants around practical uses of AI to support decisions by enterprises and public bodies; sessions run at the Ancient Monastery of Santa Chiara and online, and provisional partners range from the Tagliacarne Centre to the Italian Statistical Society, giving local officials direct access to tools, vendor contacts and evaluation questions they can use back at the office.

Planners in San Marino should note the conference's strong applied focus - including a dedicated session that explores data visualization and foresight methods - making ASA 2025 a rare chance to see concrete, transferable approaches to procurement, impact assessment and citizen‑facing analytics in one place (event details: ASA 2025 Data, Statistics and AI conference - UniRSM; session summary: Visualizing the Future foresight and data visualization session - Millennium Project).

Visualizing the Future: How to Effectively Communicate Future Scenarios

Key AI use cases for San Marino's public sector map directly to the platforms and demos on display at ASA 2025 and in the SDMX ecosystem: modernizing statistics and decision‑support so ministries can convert surveys into interoperable, reusable datasets; natural‑language “talk‑to‑your‑data” interfaces that let non‑technical officers query health, tourism or ageing indicators; geospatial and GeoAI analysis to bring location into planning; supervisory analytics and NLP for risk detection in finance and procurement; and searchable, LLM‑enhanced data discovery to make open data truly usable.

Practical pilots - built around SDMX toolchains, .Stat Suite-style pipelines and natural‑language front ends - mean small administrations can move from siloed spreadsheets to explainable dashboards without years of bespoke development, and sessions at the University of San Marino's ASA 2025 conference will spotlight concrete implementations and partners (details: ASA 2025 - Data, Statistics and AI conference (University of San Marino)) while existing national and regional data services provide ready sources for these tools (ISTAT open data portal and interactive systems).

«Making sense of data is the winning competence in all industries.»

Social media and public communications in San Marino can lean into generative AI to move faster and speak more personally without ballooning budgets - Forrester's analysis shows genAI can produce high‑quality content at scale while freeing staff for higher‑value work (Forrester generative AI trends report), and marketing plays from Kadence show how the same tools enable rapid A/B creative testing, localized visuals and tailored messaging that resonate with tourists, residents and businesses alike (Kadence generative AI marketing guide for creative campaigns).

That upside comes with clear guardrails: keep human review in the loop to preserve authenticity, audit outputs for bias, and map every content pipeline to privacy monitoring and vendor controls (see practical guidance on IAPP‑aligned privacy monitoring and why algorithmic impact assessments matter in government deployments at Nucamp) (Nucamp AI Essentials for Work syllabus - IAPP-aligned privacy monitoring guidance, Nucamp AI Essentials for Work syllabus - algorithmic impact assessment guidance).

The real “so what?” is simple: a handful of well‑configured prompts, a short editorial checklist and transparent disclosure of AI use let a compact civil service publish timely, personalized updates that build trust instead of eroding it.

GenAI empowers businesses to produce high-quality content at scale while freeing up human resources for higher-value tasks.

Implementation priorities for San Marino agencies should focus on three practical pillars: security hygiene, legal provenance, and simple governance routines that staff can use every day.

Start by hardening baselines and incident playbooks with NIST‑style controls (continuous monitoring, change approval and automated threat scoring) so small teams spot anomalies early - a vendor snapshot that looks “normal” today can become an exploitable blind spot tomorrow (see NIST support for automated detection and response via Vectra AI).

Second, lock down training‑data provenance and licensing: avoid "shadow library" risks by requiring suppliers to document sources and licensing terms up front and build contractual clauses that permit audits, retention limits and takedown obligations (recent US decisions show courts decide these issues on the facts, so documentation matters).

Third, operationalize accountability with lightweight Algorithmic Impact Assessments, IAPP‑aligned privacy monitoring and role‑based approvals so every pilot carries a one‑page risk summary for procurement and a reviewer who checks bias, safety and disclosure before go‑live (practical curricula and templates are available for staff cohorts).

Finish with a short, repeatable checklist for each rollout - provenance, DPIA, security baseline, contract clause, human‑in‑the‑loop, and public disclosure - and treat the checklist as part of procurement, not paperwork to ignore.

“Decisions will be fact-specific.”

Conclusion - turn strategy into practice: San Marino's leaders should treat the Government AI Readiness Index as a compass for where to invest next (review the Oxford Insights Government AI Readiness Index for benchmarking and gaps: Oxford Insights Government AI Readiness Index 2024), then lock in three practical moves: (1) adopt a short, repeatable risk‑assessment routine and require a one‑page Algorithmic Impact Assessment for every pilot so procurement and reviewers see bias, provenance and human‑in‑the‑loop controls at a glance; (2) focus on fast, evidence‑driven pilots that convert ISTAT/SDMX data into explainable dashboards and natural‑language query fronts, using ASA 2025's applied sessions to source partners and vendor evaluation questions so a minister can return from the conference with concrete contacts and an evaluation checklist; and (3) close the human‑capacity gap by enrolling procurement officers and policy teams in practical cohorts - for example the 15‑week AI Essentials for Work bootcamp - to learn prompt design, vendor auditing and IAPP‑aligned privacy monitoring so staff can operationalize DPIAs and disclosure obligations rather than outsourcing them.

Complement these steps with the IPU's parliamentary governance actions to build a simple AI governance board, an ethics code and stakeholder engagement routines (IPU strategic actions for AI governance), and embed the checklist - provenance, DPIA, security baseline, human review, public disclosure - into procurement as a non‑negotiable requirement; small administrations that make these moves quickly will convert international commitments into trustworthy, faster services without adding bureaucratic weight (practical training & syllabus: AI Essentials for Work - Nucamp syllabus).