City of Bonn resident services Self-service in six languages

BONN · New self-service terminals at the municipal administration building allow citizens to take photos, give fingerprints and signatures for new passports, ID cards and driver’s licenses. Average waiting times are short.

"Welcome to the service center of the city administration in Bonn": Two new self-service terminals offer a friendly welcome to users applying for a passport, ID card or driver’s license. At the terminal, users can have a passport photo taken, fingerprints registered and give a signature.

From her position at the information desk, Brigita Piljic looked at the new terminals. “Oh, God, I thought, what can I expect from that,” she says. “When the photo machine was there, people came to me frequently and didn’t know how to use it. Also because the instructions were only in German. Or they wanted to change money, or they weren’t happy with the pictures. But now everything is running smoothly.” The terminals lead users through the process in German, English, Spanish, French, Russian or Turkish.

Thomas Fricke, department head at the service center, recalls, “We got some negative press last year with lots of people and long waiting times.” He is pleased that the average processing time required to create fingerprints and signatures has been shortened by about five minutes per operation. “Our average waiting times at the moment are clearly in the green,” he comments. He doesn’t want to attribute this result to the new terminals alone but wants to wait for the figures at the end of the month. “But we can already guess that it has helped us a little.”

GA spoke to some citizens at the service center about the new terminals and they felt the self-service screens were running smoothly, saving time and customer-friendly. Information given on the displays was widely viewed as self-explanatory. One visitor criticized that the fact that everyone could watch as a person posed for the photo - there is no curtain like in the old photo booths. But for the nostalgic, the old kiosk can still be found at the town hall. The main thing is that the photo is “biometric.”

The citizen services center is located in the municipal administration building of the City of Bonn at Berliner Platz 2. For more information and opening hours in English, visit: Opening Hours

(Org. text: Stefan Hermes)

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