No more coordinating an appointment, no more time spent waiting: Since 2020, the City of Wiesbaden has made marriage registration available as a digital service. In the wake of the corona pandemic, the cooperation between the Wiesbaden Registry Office and WebID has enabled couples to register for marriage online, and from the comfort of their sofa after work.
Precisely two years after the successful introduction of the digital registration procedure for marriage via VideoID, the Wiesbaden Civil Registry Office is broadening its range of authentication services to include online identification by way of the identity card’s eID chip. This marks a digital advance enabling citizens to make individual selections as to their favourite authentication method.
“I am delighted to announce that with the registration of marriages, we have been able to continue to perform a highly sought-after service at the Civil Registry Office as part of the pilot project, and in a pandemic-compliant manner. In 2020, this online procedure set a milestone for new digital services in modern administration consistently tailored to the needs of citizens”, explains Wiesbaden’s mayor, Dr Oliver Franz. Furthermore: “We are proud to be in a position, in wich we successively expand our online service with the addition of the basic authentication for digital administration – the authentication with new identity card.”
Online registration involves the following steps:
- Both prospective spouses consult the marriage calendar of the Civil Registry Office at standesamt.wiesbaden.de and submit their personal data.
- This is followed up either by a live video call (VideoID) with qualified WebID security agents, in which the couple’s identity is validated on the basis of several personal characteristics and corresponding identity documents, or by the recently introduced WebID authentication function with the identity card’s eID card via an App. Finally, the signature option (SignID) of WebID facilitates completion of the process in a legally compliant manner.
- Should the final evaluation by the registrars nevertheless determine the legal necessity of attending in person, those wishing to marry will be notified immediately for an on-site appointment to be arranged.
The Wiesbaden Civil Registry Office has been entrusting WebID, the market pioneer in online identification, with this task since 2020; a cooperation honoured by the “Prize for Good Administration” in 2021, which awards citizen-centred and innovative work by local, state and federal authorities. The initiator is the Public Service Lab and the Berlin University of Applied Sciences. The award, conferred for the third time in 2021 by a highly distinguished jury comprising of representatives from the fields of science, politics and administration, was presented by the Public Service Lab and the Berlin University of Applied Sciences. Aiming to further increase accessibility for people with disabilities when registering to marry online, to provide, when required, flexibility with respect to time and to foster digitisation in the public sector, WebID is set to provide future digital authentication procedures via a live video call (VideoID), identification via the ID card’s eID chip (eID), as well as the legally valid electronic signature option (SignID). The decisive factors in opting for the Berlin-based Fintech were its excellent security standards and user experience in the respective procedures. Here, the resulting success rates speak for themselves: Since December 2020, almost 4,000 people wishing to marry have made use of Wiesbaden’s online service, of whom approx. 96% were (very) satisfied (as of December 2022).
With this in mind, Frank S. Jorga, CEO and founder of WebID, remarks: “For WebID, the online registration for marriage in Wiesbaden constitutes a unique digitalisation project. Ideally, it should even serve as a showcase for other public administrations. We are especially pleased about the prospect of further expanding the online provision of public services in collaboration with the Wiesbaden registry office.”
The Civil Registry Office and Citizens’ Advice Bureau of the state capital Wiesbaden aims in future to increasingly bring its administrative services to the customer online, since citizen orientation and innovative processes are a matter of great concern. This aspiration reflects the core convictions of the WebID Group, namely, the advance of digitalisation in Germany.
For additional information on this subject, please contact the WebID Group press department.