RISE has been nominated for the Progress Award of the Year at Stockholm Smart City 2026. In an interview, Claus shares his insights into smart city initiatives in Swedish local authorities and what it takes to move from pilot projects to real-world benefits.
“A test bed or pilot project is a way of gaining hands-on experience that you simply cannot get by just sitting at your desk.”
“It is difficult to derive value from your data in a situation where you cannot make your data available.”
RISE on smart cities: data, collaboration and the path from pilot to real-world benefits
RISE has been nominated for the Progress Award of the Year at Stockholm Smart City 2026. To mark the nomination, we interviewed Claus about his experiences from nearly ten years of working on smart city projects with Swedish local authorities – and what it takes to move from pilot projects to delivering real benefits.
How do test beds reduce risk in public procurement?
Test beds and pilot projects provide practical experience that cannot be gained from behind a desk. They help to identify risks, improve the specification of requirements and create better conditions for procurement, whilst also providing suppliers with valuable feedback in more realistic environments.
What is the most common bottleneck in smart city projects?
It is rarely the technology that is the problem – rather, it is the lack of access to usable data and organisational conditions. Data is often locked away in systems, which limits the potential to derive value from it.
How do you ensure interoperability and cyber security?
Interoperability requires data to be separated from services and managed using common standards and open APIs to avoid vendor lock-in. Cybersecurity is fundamentally based on information classification, which determines how data can be shared and protected.
How can local authorities move more quickly from innovation to implementation?
This requires long-term, collaborative work across the whole of the municipality. Working in silos may yield quicker results in the short term, but risks sub-optimisation. Collaboration is crucial for building shared capabilities and enabling scaling.
Fundamentally, the work on smart cities is not about individual projects, but about a long-term transition in which data, organisation and collaboration are crucial to creating real benefits.
