Surgut District Launches Its Own AI Platform, Torum
The new AI project is being readied for real-world testing. Other local governments may eventually join Torum.
Russia has another example of homegrown technology designed to meet the needs of local government. The administration of Surgut District in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug–Yugra has developed Torum (Torum), a digital platform that runs four AI-powered services. These services handle repetitive tasks, speed up document preparation and review, and analyze data. Torum operates in a closed environment and is being refined in collaboration with relevant departments to meet information security requirements.
The district is now presenting its experience developing its own municipal AI services at regional and federal events. Alexander Romanyuk, deputy director of the district administration’s Department of Information Technology and Digital Development, delivered a presentation at a specialized session in Tyumen. The district also plans to present its platform development strategy at the Young Strategists of Russia competition in St. Petersburg. These technologies are particularly relevant to small and geographically remote local governments with limited staff. They can help officials process residents’ applications and inquiries and prepare responses as quickly as possible.
Torum for Other Regions
Local administrations and subordinate institutions could be the first to join the platform. Testing it with these organizations would help determine whether Torum can work beyond the Surgut District administration. Other regions also need this kind of technology, making nationwide adoption a plausible longer-term prospect.
Torum is also set to expand its resident-facing services. Promising areas include automatically classifying incoming inquiries, drafting responses, routing applications between departments, and monitoring deadlines for assigned tasks. Meanwhile, Surgut District has already established an AI lab within its Investment Agency to build a portfolio of AI assistants and applied solutions. This infrastructure could also support a dedicated development team that creates new digital products for municipal government.
Misha and Digital City: How AI Helps Government
AI is already being used across Russia to automate government operations, document workflows, and responses to residents’ inquiries. Moscow, for example, has a voice assistant for the city’s contact center. In the first 10 months of 2021 alone, it handled more than 24 million calls, including 12.3 million without human operators. Nationwide, another example is an automated system developed by the autonomous nonprofit organization ANO Dialog to assess the quality of government responses to inquiries on social media. The system evaluates how polite the responses are and whether they rely on formulaic language.
Yugra has also introduced notable solutions. In October 2023, local authorities announced the development of a digital assistant designed to provide management information and analytical reports quickly. The following year, the region introduced Misha, an AI assistant for the governor of Yugra. It provides information on budget execution, government programs, official assignments, and current regional conditions. Similar assistants have emerged in many regions: in Novosibirsk Oblast, AI helps government agencies respond to residents’ inquiries; in Yakutia, it helps prepare standard legal documents; and in Surgut, the Digital Gorod (Digital City) project was already monitoring municipal infrastructure before Torum was developed.
Putting the Platform to the Test
Surgut District’s experience shows that automation can be implemented by a local development team. The new platform’s effectiveness now needs to be tested in practice; only then can its real potential be assessed. The evaluation will need to track the number of users, reductions in document processing time and maintenance costs, and improvements in response accuracy.
AI tools for processing documents and residents’ inquiries could become some of the most widely used AI applications in government over the next few years. Existing projects already demonstrate the practical value of these AI assistants. Information security, meanwhile, remains a fundamental requirement for scaling them up. Handling internal documents requires secure infrastructure, access controls, and human specialists to review AI-generated results.
