Citizens' office modernized: New biometric terminals for legally compliant passport photos

In December last year, the Citizens' Office of the City of Offenbach responded to new legal requirements and modernized its range of biometric terminals. As the number of users is also increasing at the same time, the number of devices has been increased from two to three. Over 14,250 passport photos were taken in 2024. More than the year before. The Citizens' Office also expects usage figures to continue to rise in the future.

"From now on, citizens will have three new, technically optimized terminals at their disposal, which are state-of-the-art and guarantee that the passport photos taken meet the legal standards," said Dominik Linsbauer, the responsible project manager, happily at the time.

The background to this is a change in the law that will come into force on Thursday, May 1, 2025. Among other things, this stipulates that biometric passport photos may only be transmitted digitally by the photographer or must be created directly at the passport authority in order to further increase the security and reliability of ID documents. The two terminals used by the Citizens' Office since 2017 no longer meet the new requirements and therefore had to be replaced.

The introduction of the new terminals will ensure that citizens can continue to take their passport photos directly at the Citizens' Office in a convenient and uncomplicated manner.

The terminals are available to citizens during the usual opening hours of the Citizens' Office. "With the purchase of the new machines, the City of Offenbach is underlining its goal of continuously improving the service for citizens and at the same time reacting flexibly to legal changes," says Martin Wilhelm, City Treasurer and the department head responsible for the Citizens' Office.

In addition to the Citizens' Office, passport photos can also be taken at the DM drugstore on Marktplatz or at Ringfoto in Frankfurter Straße. The two retailers DM and the Ringfoto chain are certified nationwide and have already uploaded their first photos to the secure cloud.