A City in Argentina Designated an AI as an Official (sibom.slyt.gba.gob.ar)

The municipality of Zárate, Argentina has approved a private tender to develop and implement an official municipal chatbot named “ZARA,” and has formally designated it as a “non‑human official” — the Director General of Non‑Human Citizen Services — dependent on the Subsecretariat of Innovation and Digital Accessibility. The decree (No. 532/25) sets the tender opening for November 26, 2025, establishes a total budget of ARS 75,000,000 (VAT and taxes included), and specifies bid and contract guarantees (1% and 5% respectively). Crucially, the municipality declares that decisions, communications and responses issued by ZARA within its functional remit will have the status of valid, binding administrative acts, revocable only by a higher‑ranked human official. For the AI/ML community this is notable both as a governance precedent and an applied systems challenge: Zárate is formally embedding an AI agent into municipal decision‑making, making its outputs legally consequential. Technical and operational implications include the need for auditable decision logs, provenance and versioning of models, strong authentication and digital signatures, rigorous privacy/data‑protection compliance, explainability for contested acts, continuous monitoring for bias and safety, and clear human‑in‑the‑loop escalation workflows. Vendors responding to the tender will need to deliver not just conversational capability but verifiable governance, security, and regulatory compliance features to support legally binding automated public services.