News from the offices

The Planning and Building Office will be closed on Tuesday, February 17, 2026. The Office's building consultancy will not be represented in the building office on this day.

After two years of refurbishing the Büsingpalais and renovating the wedding hall there, the registry office can now use it again.

The year 2025 has been successfully completed and City Treasurer Martin Wilhelm takes the opportunity to take a closer look at the results of the Citizens' Office.

In 2024, the 26 employees of the Foreigners' Registration Office attended around 20,000 appointments and dealt with the concerns of a total of around 48,000 customers.

From January 2026, the Central Advice and Service Point will also be open on Monday mornings. This means that citizens can visit the social welfare office in person three days a week.

Thomas Schuster, customer advisor at the Offenbach Citizens' Office, is celebrating his 25th anniversary of service. The trained electrician joined the Offenbach City Police as a career changer at the beginning of the millennium.

The leaders of the Gießen, Wetzlar, Fulda, Offenbach, Limburg and Bad Nauheim city association met for an intensive planning session on the fringes of the meeting of the Hessian Association of Cities and Towns.

More than 20 citizens and eight HfG students accepted the invitation to shape a future - analog and digital - feedback culture together.

The city of Offenbach am Main has had its own app since the end of November. The application can now be downloaded for Android and iOS via offenbach.de/app or in the app stores.

On December 1, 2025, Jacqueline Schwarz celebrates a very special anniversary. She has been working for the city administration for 40 years.

On January 1, 2026, the city of Offenbach will introduce the digital dog tag. The digital dog tag is a further step towards a modern, citizen-oriented administration.

Where are the most cars in Offenbach? What is the age structure? The city can now answer questions like these via the new municipal Open Data Portal?

Martina Zimmermann began her career as a civil servant with the City of Offenbach in 1978 at the age of 16 and spent decades as a customer advisor dealing with a wide range of issues in the citizens' office.

The City of Offenbach and Offenbach University of Art and Design would like to set up an Offenbach test community to test various services - both analog and digital. Citizens are being sought for this.

Offenbach has made significant progress in the Bitkom Smart City Index 2025, moving up 23 places compared to the previous year to 49th place in the sometimes controversial index.

On October 1, Martina Fuchs, the first and long-standing head of the Citizens' Office, celebrates her 40th anniversary with the City of Offenbach.

Due to a malfunction of the registration software, there may have been occasional incorrect payment requests from the Offenbach Citizens' Office in the last 4 weeks.

At the age of 16, Andreas Leonhardt began his career at the Offenbach city administration on September 1, 1985.

Since August 2025, the Offenbach Immigration Office has been using new photo terminals for biometric passport photos that comply with legal requirements and can be created and purchased directly on site.

In December of last year, the Citizens' Office of the City of Offenbach responded to new legal requirements and modernized its range of biometric terminals.

The recent campaign days for the Citizens' Office's online services were very well received.

Last year, Bundesdruckerei's production time for passports was already extended to around eight to ten weeks from Easter until the summer vacations.

Step by step towards a smart city: the Digitalization Stabsstelle, which is part of Mayor Dr. Felix Schwenke's Department I, is driving the transformation to a smart city with innovative projects.

On December 1, 2024, the Citizens' Registration Office introduced new software for vehicle registration.

Three new, technically optimized, state-of-the-art terminals are now available to citizens at the Offenbach Citizens' Office.

The "Digitale Kommune@Hessen" won the Digital Award for the "eGovernment Service and Analysis Dashboard" digitalization project in the "Districts, Ministries and Authorities" category.

More service, less bureaucracy: For the first time, Offenbach's building inspectorate has issued a digital building permit for a private construction project in a fully digital process.

The Hessian Minister for Labour, Integration, Youth and Social Affairs, Heike Hofmann, presented the naturalization certificates in a festive setting at Biebrich Palace.

The mayors and mayors of the inter-municipal cooperation Digitale Kommune@Hessen met in September at the Hessian Association of Cities and Towns in Wiesbaden.

Fulda, Giessen, Limburg, Marburg, Offenbach and Wetzlar are in the final of this year's DIGITAL Award.

Minister Kaweh Mansoori visited the citizens' office on August 30, 2024.

On September 1, 2024, the citizens' office has reason to celebrate. The head of the office has been with the city for 40 years and the deputy head of the office for 25 years.

The state of Hesse is funding the "Competence Center for Intermunicipal Cooperation for Smart Data and AI - Smart KIKZ" set up by Offenbach with Giessen, Wetzlar and Fulda with 733,500 euros.

Since June 27, 2024, the requirements for dual citizenship have been eased, and six weeks later the Citizens' Office is taking stock.

From August 1, Offenbach residents will be able to register their apartment completely online after moving - without having to go to the citizens' office and including a change to their ID card.

Using synergies and growing together: art academy, city administration and politics, companies and civil society as places for technological and social innovation.

For around a year, the administration has been working intensively on the question of how a municipality can benefit from the use of artificial intelligence. The first fundamental progress has now been made.

Since 1 March 2024, the City of Offenbach am Main's responsibilities as the lower naturalization authority have been transferred from the Public Order Office to the Citizens' Office.

The introduction of the digital building application process in Offenbach is nearing completion. The test phase in live operation will start in April.

Private individuals or companies receive a subsidy if they set up a Freifunk router in Offenbach that other people can use to navigate the Internet.

Exchange and networking are the be-all and end-all when it comes to digitalization. This was precisely the focus of the Digital Forum, which took place for the first time in the city of Offenbach on November 16, 2023.

Around 140 citizens and employees of the city of Offenbach attended the presentation and discussion of the draft Smart City Strategy 1.0 on November 16 at the Offenbach Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

After the city and municipal utility company geared their website more towards target groups last year, they are taking a further step towards accessibility this year.

People with walking disabilities can now borrow a wheelchair at the reception desk of the Citizens' Office to make it easier for them to get around the office.

In this interview, Anne Schwarz, Head of the Digitalization Stabsstelle, and project manager Christa Petrovic explain what makes an Open Smart City and report on the goals and project status.