Speed Capture Station is the Market Leader at Registration Offices

With the aid of the Speed Capture Station ID machines, citizens can themselves capture all the biometric data needed to apply for sovereign identity documents, such as a facial image, signature and fingerprints. This greatly accelerates and simplifies the process of applying for personal IDs, passports, residence permits, and EU driver's licenses. In addition, increased security is a clear benefit offered by this solution, while face morphing is reliably prevented by means of the live recording procedure. The entire process of capturing data and performing quality assurance takes just three to five minutes. While processing the application, the official accesses the data captured by the citizen and transfers it into the application digitally and without media disruption. As a result, citizens and authorities alike benefit from the use of Speed Capture.

The Speed Capture Station, certified by the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), is already operational in more than 50 local authorities. In 2016 alone, Speed Biometrics recorded an increase in installations that exceeded 45%. The Speed Capture Station is now in use in 30% of German large cities (with more than 100.000 inhabitants), including Berlin, Hamburg, Dortmund, Essen and Dresden. "Our Speed Capture Station has advanced from being an innovative pioneer to a market leader", Managing Director Stefan Pahmeier proudly explained. His company realized the first officially recognised ID machine in Germany, in the form of the Speed Capture self-service terminal.

The citizens' centre of the District Office of Ravensburg has been using the Speed Capture Station for EU driver's license applications since January 2017. "Being citizen-friendly involves more than just having friendly employees; the objective is to make everything as easy as possible for the citizen, including through the use of technical innovation", explains District Administrator Harald Sievers, at the dedication of the driver's license photo terminal in the Ravensburg citizens' centre.

In North Rhine Westphalia, where Speed Biometrics GmbH is in fact strongly represented, two Speed Capture Stations were installed in the service centre of the Federal City of Bonn, in the first quarter of 2017. Thomas Fricke, Head of the Department for Citizens' and Road Transport Matters at Bonn City Council, said: "We were pleasantly surprised by the high usage rate, with more than 800 users in March 2017. The average time spent capturing biometric data was reduced by approximately five minutes per application in our administration. Starting with two stations from the very beginning was the right decision."

Technical partnership
secunet biomiddle, a middleware for biometric systems and eIDs, is used to capture biometric data and apply quality checks to it on the terminal. It enables the modular use of biometric system components and ID readers in various biometric or eID applications. As a joint development between secunet and BSI, secunet biomiddle is the preferred architecture and reference implementation for the use of biometrics in the context of sovereign documents.

"The focus of this joint solution is straightforward, intuitive operation, data protection, and the complete fulfilment of technical guidelines", said Marco Breitenstein, Head of the Homeland Security Division at secunet, commenting on the many years of successful collaboration.

Support for essential administrative software solutions
The Speed Capture solution supports all the key software applications in use at the registration offices. These include emeld21, KM-Ewo, MESO, OK.EWO and VOIS. Both the driver's licence and foreigners' registration offices are able to access the data from various of their software applications, and the extensive language selection is a particular advantage in foreigners' registration offices. User guidance on the Speed Capture Station is available in German, Albanian, Arabic, English, Farsi, French, Kurdish, Russian, Spanish and Turkish. Additional languages can be added at any time.