An easy way to find available appointments at the Leipzig and Dresden local Citizen Services Offices: Jakub Waller’s ‘Bürgerwecker’

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If you need an appointment at one of Leipzig’s citizen service centres, you often need to be prepared for a long wait and a great deal of patience. As a rule, you have to book the appointment online or arrange one by telephone via the citizen helpline. The latter applies mainly to older people and others who do not use the internet.

If you can’t find an available slot when booking online, you can only hope that someone cancels, or you’ll have to be online from 10.00 am the next day, when new slots are released. For many people, this isn’t feasible – we raised this issue three years ago.

An online service has recently become available called Bürgerwecker. Jakub Waller, a data scientist from Hamburg who used to live in Leipzig, has developed a free, open-source service that sends email notifications about available appointments. We’ve tested this open-source project as best we could; it’s easy to use – simpler than the original website – and has worked flawlessly so far.

As shown in the image, you enter your email address, select the nature of your enquiry, the citizens’ advice bureau and the time, as well as the days of the week on which you can visit the citizens’ advice bureau. You can choose how long the ‘Bürgerwecker’ service should run, in increments ranging from 3 days to unlimited. ‘Unlimited’ in this context means that notifications will continue until the service is terminated via the ‘Unsubscribe’ link. The maximum duration is 90 days.

After submitting the form, you will receive an email to confirm your email address, followed by an email containing a management link. You can use this link to make changes.

Subsequent emails will inform you of available appointments. You can deactivate the alert by clicking the ‘Unsubscribe’ link in the email.

We naturally spoke to Jakub Waller. The interview took place on 15 July via Zoom.

Interview with Jakub Waller

Mr Waller, your ‘Bürgerwecker’ provides information about available appointments at the Citizen Services Offices. Why can’t people book these straight away using the programme?
It was very important to me that booking wasn’t possible. Otherwise, it could lead to people hoarding appointments. If a bot were to snap up appointments, and they were then not attended, that would not be what I had in mind.

You live in Hamburg – how did you come to programme the ‘Bürgerwecker’ for Leipzig?
I lived in Leipzig for a few years, and whenever I needed an appointment, it was very time-consuming: constantly refreshing the website to see if any appointments had become available. The tool now takes care of that — it regularly checks whether there are any free appointments, and if so, an email is sent out and you can book the appointment.

I tested it and received an email with appointment slots. You then have to go to the city’s website, select the reason and the Citizen Services Offices, and if everything goes to plan, the appointments will still be available. Could it be any simpler?
I’ve tried it; it is possible to send direct links to individual appointments. However, the city’s appointment software only allows bookings to be made within an active browser session. This means the direct link would lead to the appointment booking homepage. I’ve tested all the options; the current method is the most practical.

So is the tool particularly suitable for people who check their emails frequently?
In principle, yes. Anyone with a smartphone can enable notifications for new emails and will thus find out about available appointments straight away. Anyone without a smartphone really should check their emails regularly. However, as new appointments are constantly being added, this is a workable solution for everyone.

The tool is designed for email – have you considered extending it to include messaging apps or text messages?
The idea was that almost everyone has an email address, and that’s fair enough for a start. Not everyone uses Signal, WhatsApp, or Telegram. Besides, you shouldn’t necessarily need a smartphone to use the tool.

On GitHub, under ‘What the tool explicitly does not do’, you state, amongst other things:

• No account, no login, no tracking, no cookies, no third-party JS.
• No data resale, no adverts, no paid features.

How important is this statement to you?
Very important. The idea was that the tool shouldn’t be too complicated. And it is simple: there’s no tracking, it’s data-minimalist — just the email address and the appointment required; nothing else is recorded. And it is, and will remain, free of charge.

You emphasize on the website: “This website is not officially affiliated with the City of Leipzig or its authorities. We are an independent service that provides information exclusively on available appointments.” Does the City of Leipzig know that the service exists? If so, what do they say?
I informed them; that was also very essential to me. I wanted to be transparent and wrote to the City of Leipzig explaining what the tool does and how often the page is accessed by the tool — which is once a minute. They replied that they had checked this with the data protection officer and an IT service provider and that there were no data protection or technical concerns.

Finally, now that availability for Dresden is also listed on the website, are there plans for other locations?
The tool is now fully live and has been tested by me for the Dresden citizens’ offices and registration centres. The service is currently available for Leipzig and Dresden. There is one particular feature to note: Dresden uses a different IT system to Leipzig for booking appointments. As a result, the tool only shows the earliest available slot for each citizens’ office there — exactly what the city’s appointment page displays. In Leipzig, by contrast, Bürgerwecker lists all available slots.

I’d love to offer the tool for other cities as well, but for Hamburg, for example, this isn’t so straightforward. A different system is used there, and it’s not so easy to access the appointment slots via a tool.

Mr Waller, thank you for the conversation.

Conclusion: Based on our brief test, the tool can certainly be useful for citizens. It certainly saves the time currently needed to realize that there are no available appointments. Meanwhile, in Leipzig, the appointment search is now also available for collecting residence documents from the Immigration Office.