“Berlin can do digitalization”

“What a wonderful day,” said a delighted Kai Wegner, the Governing Mayor of Berlin, at the State Chancellery's stand. The topic had been worked on for a long time, “so it's all the nicer to finally be able to release something today”. The topic is “Electronic residence registration for Berlin” and Wegner gave the go-ahead for the new online service at the Smart Country Convention. “This is an important milestone. It makes Berlin and Hamburg pioneers - and better than Munich,” said the Governing Mayor. “You can see that Berlin can do digitalization.”

The new online service can be used by anyone who is of legal age, has German or European citizenship and has moved within Germany. In addition to the necessary documents, an end device such as a PC or smartphone and the ID card app, you need the online function of the ID card with PIN and a BundID account. The forgery-proof digital registration confirmation can be downloaded in four steps and around a quarter of an hour, including verification by the authorities, and the chip on the ID card is updated. The new address sticker is sent by Bundesdruckerei a short time later.

Service used 500,000 times

The project, which was first developed in Hamburg, has been in development since 2021 and went into silent go-live in September. “We have seen that it works and today we are officially launching it,” says Wegner. However, it is not just another service that Berliners can now do from their couch in their new home. It also frees up a lot of space in the citizens' offices.

“Housing registration is used around 500,000 times a year, which means there have been a correspondingly large number of appointments at the citizens' offices so far,” said the Governing Mayor. A large proportion of these will now be freed up if this central administrative service is offered digitally and many people use electronic registration and re-registration. “And this will make it easier to get appointments at the citizens' offices.”