IoT implementation challenges and strategies: lessons from Copenhagen municipality’s endeavor

A-2 Management Consulting, in collaboration with the municipalities' IT collective KOMBIT, has collected experiences from 4 municipalities in order to uncover their experiences with IoT technology.

The Municipality of Copenhagen has chosen to develop their own IoT platform called PUMA (Platform for Supporting Mobile Workflows). Ownership of the solution has enabled the precise creation of the right solutions to support the business. Similarly, the decision has provided independence from external vendors and created the opportunity to make the platform modular, reusable, and based on open source.

However, a decision has been made not to own the infrastructure between IoT sensors and their own platform.

The PUMA solution has been successful and has created value for the municipality on several parameters, but there are also challenges and experiences that need to be considered in the ongoing work. The most significant ones are:

Thorough testing of IoT sensors early in the project is crucial for a successful solution.

It has been a larger task than expected to integrate the solutions into daily operations, where unforeseen incidents and deviations occur continuously.

Data transparency is crucial for success. It's important that all relevant parties (administration as well as field employees) have had access to data, and that data is close to where decisions need to be made and work is carried out