Is there any reason in a digital camera age to not have the passport office agent take the photo?
I describe German bureaucracy for a living. Here's a free sample: it's slow and inconvenient.
Distributing part of the process to photo booths means you can show up, hand your documents and leave. This is already more than most locations can handle. Adding to their burden won't help.
As someone else pointed out, some processes can be done by mail. Driving all the way to Berlin to sort out paperwork would put rural communities at a disadvantage.
Is this for a documentary series? I can imagine a David Attenborough series on bureaucracies of the world. Sounds both fascinating and scary.
I maintain All About Berlin. It's a collection of guides for settling in Berlin/Germany. It's basically a list of things I wish people explained to me.
For instance, my friend managed to do something by email. The same day, I got an answer from the same office confirming that it was impossible.
I spent months documenting the freelance visa application process, and worked with several relocation consultants to document it. A person I helped got a 3 year visa on the same day. It took me 2 months to get a 2 year visa, even though I coached him and had a far simpler case.
I have a copy of their process bible, a 1000 page PDF in thick German. I can assure you that they don't follow what's in it.
The vehicle processes are currently being overhauled. Vehicles can now be transferred online if the original registration was after 2015 and you own an electronic ID. More such processes will be coming shortly in all parts of administration.
It shouldn't have to be a 3 page guide, but there's enough variation in the process to warrant it. 5 years ago, just getting an appointment was an adventure.
My little suburb of 20k people has a USPS employee who handles them. Should be entirely possible even in rural areas.
Instead, they went to the photo department of the pharmacy 15 minutes away and got it done.
Driver's license is an even lower standard iirc, because it isn't abused as an ID in everything but name. Driver's licenses merely document qualification and most don't even expire so you will occasionally see some frail elderly person hand around their licence to show off how they were looking at 18 years old.
My license has a picture of a 15-year-old with the height and weight that's quite different from my current self..
DMVs already do this for drivers' licenses. It's odd that passports don't work the same way.
They don't safe your prints anywhere else then your passport or ID, so. Theoretically, you can get a passport with your picture for a different person. Very theoretical, and also very illegal. As long as the picture was within spec for biometric pictures, it was ok to bring your own.
Your point about people who can't leave their homes still stands.
EDIT: As every resident has a primary residency address registered, this also serves as, what in the US would call it, voter registration. No purging, no tempering, not separate registration. You just get the papers by mail to your primary address. Works as well for EU residents for local elections.
But, if you live in Croatia and the police already have your fingerprints from previous passports (along with you having an electronic ID card, which is standard and required), you can get a new passport quickly by applying online in the “e-gradani” or e-citizens service.
I had my prints taken, but it was for Global Entry IIRC. Agreed that I've never submitted prints for a US passport.
I know I've had my fingerprints scanned at the border a number of times. I'd be surprised if they weren't added to the record somehow.
Some countries (Russia comes to mind) require you to physically go to the visa centre to get fingerprinted as part of the visa application, and then again when you arrive at immigration
Other places where visas are online, on arrival, or not needed at all, tend to fingerprint at the border -- the U.S, Singapore, etc.
We currently don't need to get fingerprinted in the EU, but we decided to remove our freedoms so not sure if that will change next year.
Getting fingerprinted is such a common thing that I can't remember many specific countries requirements.
Only British and Irish passports are not obliged by EU law to contain fingerprint information in their chip. With the exception of passports issued by Denmark, Ireland, and the United Kingdom, all EU citizens applying for a new ordinary passport or passport renewal by 28 August 2006 (for facial images) and 28 June 2009 (for fingerprints) should have been biometrically enrolled. This is a consequence of Regulation (EC) 2252/2004 in combination with two follow-up decisions by the European Commission.