Internet of Things

in the Public Sector Perspectives from Northern Europe

Ulrika H. WestergrenKatrin JonssonOtt Velsberg March 2019

About this report This report gives insight into the usage of Internet of Things (IoT) within the public sector. The study was conducted during 2017-2018 and focused on the five countries of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Estonia in Northern Europe. In the following pages you will read about how innovative municipalities have adopted IoT solutions in different areas. This aim of this report is to improve our understanding of what is possible with IoT, what public value IoT can create, and where public sector leaders see potential for developments. Based on our research we offer recommendations and insights on how to derive value from the IoT and practical insights on how the public sector can implement these solutions more efficiently and effectively.

Research institution The research study has been conducted by researchers at the Department of Informatics, Umeå University, Sweden. One of our research profiles is the Internet of Things and we have research covering value creation, organizational implications, as well as interaction design aspects of IoT. The involved researchers have a long experience of studying the usage and effects of IoT both within the private and public sectors. In our research projects we often collaborate with public organizations and private companies. Among the private companies there is a plethora of different partners as manufacturers, software developers, high-tech companies, service providers and others. In our projects we aim to conduct research of high quality that impact the research community as well as practice. This report is our way to both highlight arenas for research and provide insights to practitioners, as well as contribute to a better usage of IoT in the public sector.

Data sources The data presented in this report has been collected from the following sources: • Interviews with the public sector: Through interviews over phone, face-to-face and over e-mail we have collected insights from public sector representatives working with specific IoT solutions and/or strategic considerations of IoT use. • Formal documentation: We used procurement- and technical documentation to verify and improve our understanding of the implemented solutions. • Third-party research: We used official reports, websites and case studies from various outlets to collect data on international smart city solutions that made use of IoT

Table of Contents IoT for Societal Benefit ....................................................................................................... 1 IoT Connectivity ................................................................................................................. 2 Public sector IoT usage ....................................................................................................... 2 Transportation and Infrastructure ......................................................................................... 4 Utilities and Environmental Monitoring Services................................................................. 5 Buildings ............................................................................................................................. 6 Care and Support ................................................................................................................. 7 Crime Detection and Prevention .......................................................................................... 8 Culture, Tourism and Sports ................................................................................................. 9 Education ........................................................................................................................... 10 International IoT Usage ..................................................................................................... 11 Key Insights ....................................................................................................................... 13 Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................. 14 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................ 14 About the Authors .............................................................................................................. 15

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IoT for Societal Benefit The digitization of the physical world has received considerable amount of attention, and with developments in both technology and connectivity, everything, from garbage bins to water pipes, can now be connected to the Internet. Different technologies and software become interconnected, communicating without direct human involvement within the Internet infrastructure. This phenomenon is collectively called the Internet of Things (IoT). After the concept of IoT was first introduced in year 2009, it has become a widespread phenomenon in all spheres of life. This report focuses on IoT within the public sector with the aim of improving our understanding of the possibilities and limitations of using sensor-based systems in a public context, and what societal values IoT can create. The public sector in this context included both local governments, that is cities, boroughs, parishes, and municipalities, and public enterprises, such as municipal housing firms and electric power companies. However, to improve the readability, the term municipality is adopted throughout the report and encompasses both local governments and enterprises. Previous research has shown that IoT’s benefits range from increased energy and resource efficiency to improved product maintenance. Gartner predicted that by 2020 more than 26 billion devices would be connected to the Internet. As these devices become more pervasive in our everyday life, they will change the way societies operate. In the forefront, solutions for private businesses and consumer electronics are becoming widely adopted, whilst the adoption of IoT by public sector is increasingly lagging behind. Consequently, there is currently no consensus on where and how IoT solutions should be deployed by the public sector. Moreover, previous research on IT implementation by public sector indicates that the solutions that are implemented often fail to produce significant value for the public sector. While the value of IoT solutions often seem obvious, e.g. improved transparency, it has proven difficult to measure the value in strictly monetary terms. As a result, public sector is hesitant to recommend these innovative solutions to other municipalities as the typical measuring system does not consider the intangible outcomes. Capturing the value of IoT requires an understanding of where and how those devices could prove to be economically and socially beneficial. Evaluating the use of these devices in their physical setting allows to improve our understanding on their potential benefits and challenges. Consequently, the examples will allow us to determine the contexts in which the implementation of IoT solutions generates tangible value. As with many other emerging technologies, there is currently no universal definition for IoT. In this study, IoT entails solutions for collecting contextual data by the use of sensory devices connected to the Internet. Similar understanding of the definition was often shared by the respondents, however, for some, IoT was related to specific network technologies, such as NB-IoT, LoRaWAN and Sigfox - just to name a few. Whilst various devices could be regarded as IoT, we dismissed solutions, in which sensory data collection was a collateral part of operating the device, i.e. smart phones and self-driving cars.

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IoT Connectivity Connectivity is essential for IoT and there are a number of different connectivity solutions available on the market. Low-power wide-area networks (LPWAN), IEEE 802.15.4, Bluetooth, WiFi and 3G/4G are examples of different infrastructures for wireless IoT-connectivity. Out of those infrastructures LPWAN is growing rapidly as it covers needs of low cost/low power consumption solutions with medium range. LoRa, Sigfox, Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) are some examples of LPWAN-technologies that we have found in this study. With these solutions wireless sensors can collect data which can then be transmitted to a central repository. While Sigfox and NB-IoT have dedicated (licensed) networks provided by operators, LoRa uses an unlicensed spectrum. Accordingly, a LoRa-network can be hosted and operated by anyone. In this study we saw that a few municipalities had implemented municipality wide LoRa networks themselves, while in other cases (especially in Finland and Estonia) Sigfox networks were provided by private companies. Currently, NB-IoT is also being launched by the larger telecommunications operators, so in some municipalities there are a number of available connectivity infrastructures for IoT. These different forms of connectivity provide different benefits and limitations and should not be considered as interchangeable.

Public sector IoT usage This study is based on interviews with public sector representatives from the Northern European countries of Finland, Norway, Denmark, Estonia and Sweden1. In total we contacted 1326 municipalities at least three times each. 335 municipalities replied and out of those, 219 indicated that they had implemented one or several IoT solutions, while 116 said they had not yet implemented IoT. Table 1 provides details:

Country No of municipalities contacted

No of municipalities that replied

No of municipalities with IoT

No of municipalities without IoT at time of study

Finland 298 58 37 21

Norway 438 44 32 12

Denmark 98 54 41 13

Estonia 202 92 59 33

Sweden 290 87 50 37

Total 1326 335 219 116 Table 1: Participating countries and prevalence of IoT solutionsPublic sector IoT usage is distributed across a number of different areas. For the sake of clarity, we have chosen to divide the examples of different solutions that we found into eight different sectors. Although there was some overlap between sectors, we could see that IoT usage was 1 The interview study in Sweden was performed in 2017 in the first step of this project. Step two was carried out in 2017-2018 and focused on the other four countries.

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highest in the transportation and infrastructure sector, followed by utilities and environmental monitoring, buildings, care and support, crime prevention, culture, tourism and sports, and lastly education. Figure 1 shows the relative distribution of IoT solutions in the different sectors among the studied municipalities. As one can see, a little more than 50% of the reported solutions were implemented within the transportation and infrastructure sectors. Together with the utilities and environmental monitoring sectors, these four accounted for almost 75% of implemented IoT solutions.

Figure 1. Relative distribution of IoT solutions within different sectors The examples of IoT solutions derived from this study are posted on the website www.globaliotmap.com, where we present a short summary of each identified solution, which category it belongs to, and show on a global map where the municipality where the solution has been implemented is located. Figure 2 is a screenshot from the website and it shows the geographical distribution of the identified examples. As is illustrated in the map, most examples are identified in Northern Europe as that that was the main focus of the study, but we have also added some examples from other countries, including various smart city projects around the world.

Figure 2. Geographical distribution of IoT examples at www.globaliotmap.com

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Transportation and Infrastructure All municipalities have, to some extent, responsibility for providing infrastructure such as roads, bridges, tunnels, water supply, sewers, electrical grids, telecommunications (including Internet connectivity and broadband speeds) for their citizens. Furthermore, they deal with issues related to traffic control, parking, and traffic flow. This was by far the category where we found the highest number of implemented IoT solutions across all participating countries. The given area incorporates solutions related to traffic control, smart parking spaces, street lighting, and water and electricity supply. The most common solution that was reported was intelligent street lighting, where sensors were used to create remotely controlled, contextually-aware street light. Depending on nearby movement, outside light, or time of the day, the lights were automatically turned on or off. Constant monitoring and remote access allowed for smoother and more timely and efficient maintenance processes. Some systems had additional add-ons, such as air quality monitoring sensors, extending the scope and use of regular street lights. While the main aim of these systems was to make the maintenance of street lights more efficient through remote access, several municipalities also saw the possibility to save energy and thereby money on more efficient and effective use of light. Other solutions focused on smart parking. In Haderslev municipality, Denmark, they have implemented car license plate scanners in public parking garages. These scanners allowed for automatic identification of cars and as a result, people no longer needed to collect a parking ticket when entering a parking garage, instead they had the option of paying parking fees using an app or by being automatically billed. Other parking management systems were used to detect vehicle occupancy and provide drivers with real-time parking space availability information. As a result, the time spent looking for available parking decreased, reducing traffic congestion and increasing user satisfaction. Some IoT solutions combined gamification with IoT. For example, in Odense, Denmark, students could get sensors to track their biking patterns. The sensors were installed on bicycles, and would automatically detect movement. Using an online system, schools, students and parents could follow bike-generated activity and compete for prizes. The main idea was to encourage movement and make exercise a natural and fun part of everyday life. The subsequent evaluation showed that activity levels among those who were using the system had indeed increased by 7% and that combining gamification with IoT proved to be a significant improvement to the deployed solution.

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Utilities and Environmental Monitoring Services In addition to providing infrastructure and solutions related to transportation, municipalities in the Nordic countries provide their citizens with access to electricity, water, sewage and waste services. This was an area where several IoT solutions had been implemented and tested. In Vordingborg, Denmark, they had implemented a smart waste solution using “Bigbelly” trash cans, a smart waste management system for public spaces. Using sensors, and powered by solar energy, these trash cans automatically detect the amount of trash in the can and notify trash collectors when they need to be emptied. The trash bins also compress trash and can therefore contain up to five times more waste than regular trash bins. The real time monitoring of trash levels allows for more efficient garbage collection due to route optimization and better logistics. Some of the trash bins are also equipped with a ‘speech module”, which greets users, and makes the trash can more visible, and therefore more likely to be used. There are also IoT solutions to measure water consumption, for example the MULTICAL 21 ultrasonic sensor manufactured by Kamstrup A/S. The meters have low flow accuracy to ensure that even very low flows are measured down to the very last drop. This secures a fair and correct billing, improves the quality of data and helps to reduce non-revenue water. Alarms from the meter lets the water company detect leaks or other irregularities, such as tampering attempts or reverse flows, quickly and efficiently. This limits water loss as well as any collateral damage. Depending on the level of water consumption, citizens can have their bills automatically deducted from their bank accounts. Environmental monitoring is used by several municipalities in the preparation of environmental impact assessments, as well as in many circumstances in which human activities carry a risk of harmful effects on the natural environment. The weather stations in Viimsi, Estonia, can be remotely monitored and controlled. Information is made visible online. For example, the system visualizes the wind direction, shows the height of the wave, outside temperature and sea level. Another example from Estonia is using IoT to measure and communicate pavement temperature in real time to provide citizens with information about road conditions, for example, whether there is black ice or it is slippery. Information is made publicly available on an open website. The same site also shows data from noise sensors attached to street lighting, which identify the level of noise and traffic on streets. In Vejle, Denmark there is an ongoing project to monitor water levels and to use the data to automatically open and close the city’s water valves, helping to protect exposed areas. The project has already been successful in reducing the impact of floods on citizens by providing online access to information about current water levels. Vejle has also tried out a carbon track and trace system, with the aim of measuring CO2 levels and air quality through deploying low-cost wireless sensors, but did not find that the available sensor technology was mature enough to be reliable and meet their needs. The solutions implemented within this area are mainly used for remote monitoring and control. However, the data that is collected has also in some cases successfully been used to create greater visibility around issues of energy and water consumption, waste, and environmental impact. This is where we found IoT solutions that also had a potential effect on citizen behavior, by raising the level of consciousness through making information publicly available and easily accessible.

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Buildings All municipalities in this study are involved in various aspects of building and property management, both during building and construction processes and, for already existing buildings, during operation and maintenance. This is an area where municipalities see a lot of potential in implementing IoT solutions that are expected contribute to higher efficiency and more cost-effective operations. The majority of the solutions described by our respondents focus on regulating and monitoring indoor climate, for example by tracking and adjusting temperature, ventilation and lights to provide optimal indoor conditions. For instance, in Riihimäki, Finland, Sigfox sensors were used to track the temperature in municipal buildings. The collected data was later used for strategic maintenance, with the objective to reduce energy costs and the impact on the environment. The necessity for such a project came from the municipal strategy, which was created in collaboration with private companies and citizens. There were also some examples of using IoT early on, during the building construction processes. In Joensuu, Finland, municipality-owned excavators used computer created models of the construction site plans and used sensors placed on the excavator’s bucket to aid with the digging process. By looking at a display and tracing the movements of the bucket, the driver could closely monitor its exact placement and ascertain that the digging was done efficiently and correctly. The main benefit of using IoT in this case was the seamless flow of specific and adequate information from the outdoor environment to the driver, which, when matched with the digital construction site plans, allowed for a more precise and informed construction process. The municipal application of IoT solutions within the buildings’ segment was mostly done from the perspective of using technology to operationalize strategy. In effect, this meant that the focus was on making construction-, operation- and maintenance processes more cost- and time-effective and traceable. However, the implementation of IoT technology also lead to unexpected outcomes. For example, although smart solutions were employed to create optimal indoor conditions, people still continued to open windows to allow for “fresh air”. Another example was brought up by music school in Saue, Estonia, where smart ventilation proved to have an effect on wooden music instruments. These instruments broke due to changing indoor climate even though the climate met all necessary requirements. Based on our study, we found that initial implementations did not consider the end-user perspective to any significant degree, and that acceptance rates and thereby feelings of success were varied. Consequently, it was a budding insight for people engaged within this domain, that IoT is as much about the people and environments affected by the solutions as it is about the technology itself.

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Care and Support When it comes to municipal implementations of IoT for care and support, the main focus for most of the municipalities in our study was on providing solutions for elderly citizens, either for home care or assisted living. Common examples included medical bracelets and real time tracking systems that kept track of individual’s location and notified the municipality or the caretaker when something was out of the ordinary. In some cases, a variety of sensors were used to provide a richer picture of a person’s health status. For instance, seizure sensors were used to detect if someone would get a seizure while in bed and immediately signal healthcare personnel. Bed sensors could detect when a person got out of bed and turn on the lights in the room to reduce the risk of stumbling and falling in the darkness. Motion sensors that detect movement in a nursing home could alert staff that someone was out and about, for example in the middle of the night when patients were expected to be sleeping, and help them locate an individual before someone wandered off or got lost. These devices were designed to improve the safety and well-being of citizens, but as with the IoT solutions in education, there were concerns about the ethical aspects of monitoring individuals and finding patterns in their behavioural data. All solutions that explicitly monitored individuals were based on obtaining informed consent from the individuals being monitored, which sometimes was hard to achieve, with, for example, people who suffered from dementia. Other solutions that were used within the healthcare sector were smart door locks, that did not require a key, enabling home care staff to access the homes of their patients, by the use of their mobile phones. In addition, these smart locks logged the time a carer spent in a person’s home, and provided the municipality with information about the home care services and how they were carried out in real time. Furthermore, in the case of an emergency, responding staff would have an easier time accessing homes and could thus respond quicker to calls. Several solutions on the market were more specific to certain diagnoses, for example smart asthma inhalers for people suffering from asthma, and smart watch non-invasive glucose measurement, for diabetics. In our study, several Danish municipalities made use of the ICURA trainer; an interactive training platform developed for the rehabilitation of hips and knees after surgery. The ICURA trainer consists of motion sensors that can measure and analyse the quantity and quality of training and a mobile application that guides the patient and provides visual response. The purpose is to increase citizen’s opportunity to follow their training regime, thus improve the success rate of rehabilitation. The pilot project has shown high patient satisfaction and equally effective exercise compared to traditional training. Although there were concerns about privacy and security, the municipalities in our study saw the use of IoT for care and support as something that would provide value to their citizens and improve their quality of life, enabling elderly people to stay in their own homes for longer and with an increased sense of security. At the same time the systems had potential to improve the municipalities’ own processes, helping them providing more efficient, targeted, and timely care.

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Crime Detection and Prevention There are a number of IoT solutions designed to improve public safety by early crime detection and prevention. For example, gunshot location systems use audio sensors and network capability to detect gunfire and determine when and where shots have been fired, and convey that information to the police. Such systems are currently used in public safety and law enforcement in over 100 American cities and are accredited with helping reduce violent crime and deterring people from firing shots at random. Similar systems have been used to protect South Africa’s Kruger national park from wildlife poaching as strategically placed sensors quickly detect and transmit information about activity in the area. In the Nordic countries, however, these types of detection systems are sparsely used. In fact, in this particular study, Estonia is the only country that stands out when it comes to implementing IoT solutions for crime prevention and reduction. A number of Estonian municipalities have implemented automated surveillance systems using IoT technology, which allows for automatic identification of car license plate details. This information collected through cameras is automatically compared to police databases and used to notify police of vehicles suspected of crime. It was hard to show a direct correlation between the reduction of crime and use of sensors, but there were plenty of examples, where crimes and feuds had been solved using the collected data. Furthermore, the implementation of IoT solutions for crime and disaster prevention had pushed municipalities to rethink their current innovation strategies. For instance, in the municipality of Saku, Estonia, the municipality originally got the idea for a sensor-based surveillance system from the Estonian police. In order to reduce costs, they ended up developing the whole system themselves, with the added benefit that they were later able to use the knowledge and the skills that they had gained to initiate additional IoT projects. Thus, although the initial push for innovation came from an external actor, the municipalities realized that they were sometimes best suited to carry out the projects themselves. Furthermore, the municipalities had a strong responsibility of informing the public and making everyone aware of the system, its benefits, and its potential drawbacks. The case of IoT crime prevention shows that the relatively low cost of computing and sensors coupled with new technical know-how opened a new level of innovation for the public sector. The Estonian IoT crime prevention projects were characterized by strong nation-wide leadership and part of the Estonian police’s agenda. However, the resulting projects caused municipalities to re-think how their current situation could be improved and inspired them to push their own innovation agendas forward. Furthermore, it shows the importance of including citizens and informing them about the purpose of the system, and what it can and cannot do.

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Culture, Tourism and Sports Although municipalities are often very conscious about the public value that can be created by developing and enhancing experiences related to culture, tourism and sports, this is an area where we did not find many implemented IoT solutions to date in our investigated countries. A simple explanation for that is that the municipal implementation of IoT is still in its early stages and that other sectors initially take priority. When on a limited budget, elected officials most often choose to spend money on solutions that they estimate will provide solid return on investment, by for example improving current processes, making them more effective and efficient. The systems that were in use were focused on enhancing user experience and adding extra value to sightseeing visitors touring the cities. Raahe, Finland, is the first municipality in Finland to use the GLOPAS audio guide application that provides users information based on their GPS location. The system starts guiding automatically when proceeding a city sight. The system provides information about the nature, history, culture of a place and targets interesting sights for visitors and locals. Another way of using IoT for public benefit was shown in Pori, Finland where they were testing a video system that allows for counting the number of tourists and citizens at a local beach area. This information could prove to be valuable for visitors who can use the data to decide which area of the beach to visit. Several municipalities indicated that they aspire to use IoT to gather and pass on information that is thought to improve the visitor’s experience- for example by using sensors to estimate queue time in amusement parks and museums, which could produce both realistic wait time expectations and improvements in resource planning. Other examples included integrating sensor technology into libraries and other public venues, to provide an augmented reality experience based on sensor information, the visitors’ location, and preferences, as well as “smart” stadiums acting as a platform for increasing opportunities for fans and visitors to engage with their favorite teams and athletes. Our study shows that the use of IoT within the culture, tourism and sports sector was commonly thought of as a way to build identity and offer an attractive environment to both locals and visitors. Through an innovative use of sensor technology, municipalities hoped to create value from a citizen centric perspective, focusing on interaction, engagement and enriched experiences. It was also considered a tool for strategic planning- by using sensors to find out more about visitors, their preferences, movements through the cities, preferred attractions etc., one could better tailor services to fit their needs. Although most of the ideas were at the conceptual level at the time of this study, this is an area estimated to grow quickly in the coming years.

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Education There are several IoT solutions on the market that have been developed specifically for school settings to improve safety, encourage student engagement, and optimize indoor climate conditions, but as it turned out, the majority of the municipalities in this study did not make use of any of them. In fact, there were only two examples of consciously implementing IoT in schools. Both were from Finland, where two municipalities indicated that they had installed systems that were used to record attendance in Kindergartens and schools. The systems allow for check-in of children as they arrive at the Kindergarten and check-out as they leave. NFC chips are used to collect the data. The systems make it possible for parents to be remotely notified about the late arrival or absence of a child. Information is made available online and through automated text messages, and caregivers can also access the system online and update their child’s schedule. This has reduced the burden on teachers in keeping attendance records and has made it easier for parents to interact with the schools. However, these systems were all based on manual input as students had to touch the screen in order to check in or out. As such, they were, in this implementation, not truly automated and sensor based, as they relied on human efforts in order to function properly. IoT in education is an area under development, and there are many potential benefits associated with IoT use in schools. By installing IoT solutions that use sensors in combination with cameras to automatically detect and identify students and staff, schools can promptly notify parents about the late arrival or absence of a child. Furthermore, such a system can be used to identify unknown visitors on school property and inform school officials of their whereabouts. Solutions such as these are primarily designed to improve safety and to increase communication with caregivers. Other IoT solutions that are designed for educational settings are more focused on enhancing students’ learning experience by, for example, making use of sensor data and identifying patterns and habits in order to provide more personalized experiences and education tailored to individual needs. A third application area for IoT in schools is building automation, with sensor-based climate control, intelligent lighting and smart waste bins, however although these types of solutions were in fact implemented in several of the municipalities, they were not labelled as IoT solutions for education. Instead they were regarded as using IoT for building operation and maintenance purposes. Several of the IoT solutions that target the education sector are centered on the possibility of identifying and keeping track of individuals as opposed to solutions that use depersonalized data. In our study, some municipalities raised concerns about this growing trend of people tracking. They pointed out that when technology is used in this way and in an environment where there are mainly children present, with little or no possibility to give explicit consent, there must be an active, transparent, and ongoing dialogue about the ethical use of IoT and how to handle privacy and security concerns.

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International IoT Usage Internationally we can find a number of different IoT solutions deployed in different public areas. In our study we looked for IoT examples in Smart City settings as these are often characterized as using technology for innovative solutions. Similarly to northern Europe, the more common solutions were in the infrastructure and transportation area. For instance, smart lighting was commonly deployed by municipalities. However, the functionalities of these typical solutions were sometimes extended further, for instance in Eindhoven the smart lighting was used to prevent violence and predict when the roads become over-crowded. The following section introduces some of the more outstanding examples. GPS-enabled asthma inhalers - Louisville, Kentucky, USA The AIR Louisville program helps to put smart inhalers in the hands of citizens, helping to find a connection between asthma severity and air pollution. The GPS-enabled asthma inhalers provide air quality information to the city, which is used to explore the connection between asthma severity and air pollution. Analyzing the data, the city can better improve the severe areas of the city and notify residents of bad air quality. Flood monitoring system - Virginia Beach, Virginia, USA Virginia Beach has implemented a flood monitoring system to measure the water level in real-time. The system uses ultrasonic sensors to measure the depth of water, while GPS provides the location. The cloud-based platform automatically warns about rising sea levels and coastal flooding 36 hours ahead of the event. This allows citizens to move their cars and evacuate from flood-prone areas. Data is transmitted using GSM or WiFi. At the time of writing, 25 sensors had been deployed in the city. Stratumseind 2.0 real-time testing - Eindhoven, Netherlands Stratumseind 2.0 real-time testing project aims to study the effect of lighting colors, hues and temperature on human behavior. Five testing grounds was chosen for intelligent lightning. Stratumseind will be a Living Lab where massive amounts of data about people's activities will be used to determine the effects of measures and to study which factors contribute to violence and discomfort. Furthermore, the lighting poles allow to collect data which is used to predict when the street might become over-crowded and adjust lighting to prevent incidents. Through this Eindhoven manages to extend the typical smart lighting. Water measurement sensors - Fountain Valley, USA Faced with drought, Fountain Valley decided to deploy water measurement sensors to track water consumption and raise citizen awareness on where water is used. To achieve this, Fountain Valley deployed water measurement sensors developed by Senus. This helped both the city and citizens to identify leaks, better manage their water consumption and create awareness of where water is used. For instance, the city contacts citizens that use a lot of water. All this has reduced water consumption by 23%. Irrigation clocks - San Leandro, USA To combat drought and preserve water San Leandro installed irrigation clocks at its parks. The smart irrigation clocks automatically adjust the watering schedule. The devices allow to save water, eliminate wasteful runoff, and apply the right amount of water for the plants. Parking ground sensors - Cottesloe, Australia Cottesloe has installed 588 in-ground parking sensors to detect the occupancy of parking spots. Using parking management system SmartRep it is possible to see the occupancy timing and

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status of each parking spot. This supports enforcement officer’s job who can control vehicles that might have violated the parking terms. All overstays are identified in real-time by minute precision. The system has generated additional revenue and created savings through efficiency. Parking revenue increased from 230,000 AUD to 980,000 AUD. Trash bins - Santander, Spain Santander has installed more than 6,000 IoT devices that use sensors, RFID and NFC technologies to track waste management. These different devices allow monitoring the current fill-level of trash bins and containers in real time. Using trash bin GPS location, the city has been able to optimize its waste collection. The information is available through “Ciudad Santander” app, which also allows citizens to view information about trash collection, report problems and contact the municipality. Hello Lamp Post - Bristol, UK The city of Bristol implemented Hello Lamp Post platform on its streets. The system allows having conversations with street furniture and objects using text messages. By using different identifier codes people can have different unique conversations with different objects such as lamp posts and bridges. Trash bins - Borough of Rugby, UK A ‘smart waste’ solution called Bigbelly was implemented in Borough of Rugby. The trash bins notify how full the trash bins currently are and when they need to be emptied. This allows for more efficient garbage collection due to route optimization. The trash bins can contain up to five times more waste than regular trash bins. In total 56 traditional bins were replaced with 23 Bigbelly trash bins. This allowed reducing the number of waste collections from around 51,000 per year to 1,500 per year. Considerably reducing carbon emission and costs. System for urban planning - Dordrecht, Netherlands Dordrecht municipality in collaboration with Libelium has deployed sensors that allow to detect road occupancy patterns. The collected data is used for urban planning as Dordrecht sees significant movement of people to Rotterdam during the day. The sensors collect the data through detecting MAC addresses of different devices and cars. Data is periodically downloaded over WiFi connection and used to visualize traffic flow and density. This has allowed the municipality to identify movement patterns and better plan urban planning.

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Key insights Based on our research we offer recommendations and insights on how to derive value from the IoT and practical insights on how the public sector can implement these solutions more efficiently and effectively. In this section we present some of the key insights from this study. Building the business case Digitalization permeates innovation in all areas of the public sector and IoT creates new opportunities for solutions to existing problems. A challenge for municipal businesses is to find economic spaces for innovation in the daily activities that are often characterized by cost savings. In order to demonstrate the value of the business, the focus is usually on needs, and the cost-saving need. Value creation with the help of IoT in the public sector is thus, in most cases, about lowering costs, which is reflected in solutions with focus on buildings, infrastructure, utilities etcetera, which are driven by major maintenance costs. With a strong business case based on the municipal operations and its needs, we see that IoT created social values, mainly through more efficient solutions. A problem or challenge driven approach to IoT development and use is important for having the businesses and users with them, but it is also important that the public sector dares to challenge its activities in how the work is to be conducted so as not to get caught up in incremental changes. Radical innovations with great potential to create value require that old truths are challenged and discussed. Technological considerations For IoT solutions there are a number of different technical dimensions to consider, ranging from choice of sensor to connectivity, application and IoT platform and IoT standard. We can see that many municipalities are quite immature in their technical knowledge around IoT, as there are many techniques to have knowledge about and the area is new and growing. The risk of low technical know-how is that the client competence is low and as many IoT suppliers want to sell complete solutions, this can lead to downpipe solutions that are not compatible in the long-run. Isolated solution risks creating challenges in accessing and sharing data at the same time as it limits how data can be reused in different services. In our study we see how a single sensor can deliver data that is useful in various services and public activities. Without a clear strategy on how sensor data is to be handled, the public sector risks losing opportunities to create added value in all its operating parts. Innovation management In our study, we see that the public sector is well aware of the challenges one faces and that digitalization is an important enabler for developing the business and the values it is to deliver. However, the public sector is struggling with the challenge of managing innovation as their mission is regulated and should focus on community services. As a tax-financed business, one should not risk capital in operations that do not provide values and one usually wants to invest in well-proven solutions. In many countries, we also see that municipalities act as their own companies and that the transferability of solutions and the dissemination of knowledge at best occur within their own municipality or their own operations. This contributes to many municipalities having challenges in how innovation should be conducted. Many of the IoT solutions we have identified where the municipalities have developed the solution themselves have been done in projects often financed by external funds. A challenge for the municipalities is then to transform the innovations from project activities to the daily operations. Understanding your users The implementation of IoT within the public sector differs from IoT usage within the private sector. In the public sector the goal is to create societal value, provide services, and enhance

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the quality of life for citizens, either by providing solutions that have a direct effect on citizens (for example care and support solutions or public safety solutions), or indirectly, by making processes more efficient and providing better information, leading to a better use of public resources (such as remote monitoring of street lights or more efficient waste management). In the private sector, the ultimate goal is to create profit and capture market shares. Furthermore, the customer base is often well defined, making it possible to use IoT technology to better tailor services that cater to their specific needs. The public sector does not have specific “customers”, instead it has a duty to cater to its citizens, of all ages, capabilities and interests. As we have seen in this study, there are also many different areas where IoT has the potential to make a contribution. In combination, this can lead to very complex answers to the questions of “why?”, “and for whom?” IoT solutions in the public sector should be developed. This complexity should be acknowledged and accounted for in each new IoT project. By understanding the user perspective and reflecting on how the anticipated IoT solution can be of use to different groups of citizens, it is also easier to map out what potential value might be created and where the pitfalls are. Ethical considerations of IoT implementation and usage Smart solutions affect their surroundings. Thus, in the planning phase, one must consider how the new technology affects the current environment and the actors involved. A successful implementation of IoT technology within the public domain is very much dependent on public acceptance of the solution. This study shows that there was strong support for solutions within the transportation, building, utilities and infrastructure sectors; domains where it is possible to improve both processes and services with IoT solutions that make use of depersonalized data. However, although there are several solutions available within both the educational and care and support domains, public officials were much more hesitant to deploy these as they were often based on the possibility of tracking specific people and tracing individual behavioral patterns over time. Some of the respondents in this study pointed out that, for example, medical bracelets were beneficial on paper, however, one should ask how much the municipality benefitted from their use and whether citizens were actually interested in wearing them, the inference being that citizens are not always ready for IoT solutions. This shows that when implementing sensor-based technology it is important to not only consider what the technology can do, and how, one must also make sure that benefits outweigh perceived infringements on privacy and that there are clearly established ethical guidelines for how to handle sensor data.

Conclusions The project has delivered an in-depth mapping of municipal IoT use in Northern Europe and thereby contributed to generating an understanding of how and in which areas IoT creates societal benefits, and how such investments are coordinated and organized within the different municipalities. We have shown that an investment in IoT requires not only technological considerations, but that in order for value to manifest, there must be a strong business case and an awareness of the user perspective. Furthermore, since the application of IoT within the public sector can lead to a potential invasion of privacy for individual citizens, it is important to have established clear ethical guidelines and to keep an eye of both opportunities and downsides to IoT implementation. A successful IoT implementation in the public sector is innovative, user-oriented and well-grounded, leading to societal benefit and the creation of public value.

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About the Authors Ulrika H. Westergren is a senior lecturer at the Department of Informatics, Umeå university, Sweden and a faculty member of the Swedish Center for Digital Innovation. She is also a member of the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP) Domain Committee IoT. She is specialized in information technology and organizational change and her work covers topics such as emergent forms of organizing, digital innovation, and IT-based value creation. Currently she is focusing on viable business models for firms that are operating within an Internet of Things ecosystem and on IoT for societal benefit. Westergren's work is published in journals such as Business Horizons, Information and Organization, Information Systems and E-business Management Journal, and the Information Systems Journal. She holds an A.B. in International Relations from Bryn Mawr College and a Ph.D. in Information Systems from Umeå University.

Katrin Jonsson is a senior lecturer at the Department of Informatics, Umeå university, Sweden. Her research focuses on how organizations innovate with IT. In co-operation with industrial companies she has explored how digitalized products affect work, organizing and create opportunities for innovative value creation processes. She has received the AIS senior scholars award for best IS journal paper 2009, paper of the year award in Information & Organization and best paper award at the IRIS 27 conference. Her research has been published in journals as Information & Organization, Information Systems Journal, International Journal of Actor-Network Theory and Technological Innovation, International Journal of Operation & Production Management, International Journal of Systems Assurance Engineering and Management, Journal of Information Technology Research and Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems.

Ott Velsberg is a PhD researcher at the Department of Informatics at Umeå University, Sweden. Much of his research has concentrated on the use of information systems in the public sector, with a special focus on the use of the Internet of Things. He explores how digital innovation in smart public services through the application of IoT happens internally as well as externally, and across several dimensions of smartness. His research has been presented at the First IFIP International Cross-Domain Conference, IFIPIoT. In addition to his postgraduate work, Velsberg is also currently the Chief Data Officer for the Estonian government with the mission of leading the development of government services using artificial intelligence and machine learning.

AcknowledgmentsThis research was funded by the Strategic Innovation Program IoT Sverige with support from VINNOVA, Energimyndigheten and Formas.