Why getting an identity card in Rome is such a hassle

Finally, waits. Requests on the portal for appointments are unsuccessful. And speculation by CAFs offering a "turnkey" service for €100.

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But why is it so difficult to obtain a simple electronic identity card (CIE) in Italy? In some cities, like Rome, where waiting lines are always long when it comes to administering inconveniences to citizens, the waiting times are world-record: up to 15 months for an appointment, with the process then being completed in a matter of minutes. At this rate, it remains to be seen what will happen to those poor unfortunates (330 people), Roman citizens who only have an identity card, not a passport, which, as of August 3, 2026, is no longer valid in paper form.
Any excuse is good enough to justify this incredible waste of time. And the usual buck-passing between the City of Rome and the Ministry of the Interior administration is inevitable. To reduce the wait, after hastily deciding that all appointments had to be booked online, the service for scheduling dates and times was taken over directly by the Ministry of the Interior, through the Agenda CIE portal. I feel worse. Here, we can't even complete the appointment process.
In reality, the mechanism involves, to the dismay of citizens, both administrations. The national booking system manages appointments based on the availability that each municipality (a Rome (There are 15) decides to publish, and often these windows close quickly or don't open at all. And the Rome municipal administration defends itself by pointing to staff shortages in the various Registry offices, where staffing gaps also correspond to mountains of unprocessed electronic ID card applications.
Yet the system, in theory, should work very smoothly. You have to go to the Agenda CIE booking portal, select the municipality of Rome, and search for an available slot to then go and collect your ID card. The sign indicating this availability is a white dot, with the date and location: but it never appears, and when it does, it disappears within seconds.
Paradoxically, technology has made things worse. The CIE includes microchips with biometric data (photo, fingerprint), and this requires precise procedures to protect the data and validate the identity, adding steps compared to a simple paper card.
In Rome's public administration, which is leaking from all sides—a task primarily handled by Mayor TikTok, aka Roberto Gualtieri, who instead is constantly busy self-promoting on social media—there has been a growing speculative offer from the famous CAF (Tax Assistance Centers), run directly by trade unions. They are ready to take care of all the bureaucratic hassles and related waiting times in exchange for a modest fee of €100 to complete the process.

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