Meet Catrin Ditz, the Programme Director of IoT Sweden

In this podcast episode, you will meet Catrin Ditz, the Programme Director of IoT Sweden, in a conversation about strategic choices for the use of IoT in Swedish municipalities and regions.

Produced by: Maria Bergenheim

Episode Transcript

(00:06):
Internet of Things Sweden, IoT Sweden,
started in 2014when Internet of Things was a buzzword.
The development of IoT has progressedrapidly since then, and today we question
whether we even need to talk aboutthe concept of the Internet of Things.
I mean, most things are, to some extent,connected and integrated.

(00:29):
In this episode,
you will meet Catrin Ditz,the programme director of IoT Sweden.
We will have a conversation about ourstrategic innovation programme
and the use of IoT in Swedishmunicipalities and regions.
My name is Maria Bergenheim,and you're listening to IoT Sweden's

(00:51):
podcast about innovative IoTsolutions in the public sector.
Well, welcome to all our listeners
to another episode of theIoT Public Sector podcast.
Hello and welcome, Catrin Ditz.
Thank you.
You started as the programme director

(01:11):
at IoT Sweden this autumn, and willhead the programme until it ends in 2026.
So, IT Sweden is one of 17 strategic
innovation programmes, and we'lltalk more about that in a moment.
But first, a bit more about you, Catrin.
Please introduce yourself.

(01:31):
Thank you.
Well, I am an engineer,and I do believe in the possibilities
of making people's livesbetter by technology.
And that in this sense …
We talk about digitalization and IoT,but my interest is bigger than that.
So that can be electrification orwater supply, if you go back a bit.

(01:56):
So this possibility of using differenttechnologies
to improve societies and people's liveshas been with us for a long time.
And that, I would say, is whatmy working life has been centred around.
How has the job been so far?
Since I came here as a programme director,it's been very intense.

(02:21):
This is my first time working
at a university, so that's new, eventhough the questions about
municipalities and regions and using thesetechniques
with these organisations isn't new to me,but it's my first time in a university.

(02:43):
So very intense, a lot of fun.
It's not an easy job.
It's a job that goes across a lotof organisations and big areas.
So you could get lost.
Actually, we will talk moreabout that in a moment.

(03:04):
But I thought I'd give our listeners
a brief overviewof IoT Sweden and our context.
As I mentioned, we started in 2014.
Like all the other strategic innovation
programmes, the lifespanis maximum 12 years.
As you mentioned,IoT Sweden is hosted by Uppsala University

(03:28):
and led by a board of trustees,and I myself work at the programme office
together with you, Catrin,and five more colleagues.
Our programme is jointly funded
by the Swedish Innovation Agency, Vinnova,the Swedish Energy Agency, and Formas.
Our main objective is to fund innovative

(03:49):
IoT projects withinthe public sector, right?
We do that via open calls,
and we have projects in our portfoliothat that are centred around some main
themes, for example, healthcare,IoT infrastructure,
climate and environment,smart city, and IoT procurement.

(04:10):
That's an important themefor the public sector.
Of course, standardisationis another important theme.
But Catrin, can you please describe how
the programme hasdeveloped since we started?
Well, it's been nine years,almost nine years.
So of course, a lotof things have happened.

(04:32):
In general, you could say thatit's been a shift, a slow shift,
and it's still ongoing, that we startedout more centred around technology itself.
And now we've developed into something
that focuses moreon organisations and people.

(04:55):
And that is for two reasons.
The first is that the technique has become
more mature,more easy to use, so to speak.
And the second reason is that we've
learned in this programme and with all theorganisations we've worked with,

(05:18):
that to really maximise the use of IoTbecomes more and more about people
and change management ratherthan the technique itself.
How is that?
Because everything is about people,especially when you look at municipalities
and regions,they are there to serve people.

(05:41):
If we want to, and that is the aim,
to make life better, and alsothere's a lot of expectations on
increased efficiency,that is about people,
the people that are tohave the services from municipalities

(06:01):
and regions and also the peopleworking in these organisations.
In the introduction, I questioned whether we
even need to talk aboutthe Internet of Things.
Do we need to talk aboutthe Internet of Things?
Yes, we do.
-And that's why we do it.

(06:24):
Yes, we do.But we also need to be careful
concerning how we do it,in what framework, and for what purpose.
It's nothing in itself,
or it's something in itself,but it doesn't stand alone,
especially with our ambitionsto work with regions and municipalities.

(06:47):
We need to really be careful about
how we bring it up, and in what context,and with what knowledge at the table.
But the answer is yes,we need to talk about it.
I mean, because nowadays everybody talks
about AI, and maybe we haveto connect IoT into this.

(07:10):
Yes, absolutely.
AI is a huge thing, of course.
If you want the short version of connectingthem together, you could say that data is
the food of AI, and IoT is a generatorof data, so they are connected.
Buteven more so, I think it's important

(07:33):
with that framework or the contextthat those things need to be in a bigger
map to make sense to the municipalities,regions, and people.
And that doesn't make it easier all
the time, but it's a demandwe need to have on ourselves.
Another important thing for IoT Swedenis to be a community of knowledge.

(07:57):
I mean, to transfer knowledgeis a big a part of our work.
Could you describe whythat is important for us?
Well, it's important because to succeed,we need to combine different skills.
As we already talked about,
this is about a technique,or not a technique, a lot of techniques.

(08:21):
It's about people, and it's about
all the things that a municipality anda region is supposed to deliver.
And that includes a lotof different skills.
You mentioned procurement,how the laws are set up, of course,

(08:41):
the knowledge about the technique,but more importantly, the knowledge
for all those people workingin the regions and the municipalities.
And we need to combine all those skills.
And that is a workbecause every skill tends to have its own
language, not totally,but to a certain extent anyway.

(09:03):
So the work of combining knowledgesand skills is
really something to do and somethingthat municipalities and regions need.
And that is also what we've heard
in the programme,that that is what they need from us.

(09:24):
We often say that we operatein an ecosystem of stakeholders.
Who are these stakeholders?
They are many, first of all.
And we've mentioned a lot of times alreadythe municipalities and the regions.
But also we need to bring up
the companies, the ones that constructand deliver those solutions.

(09:47):
So we have a lot of companies that we work
with,big and small, and also those companies
coming together in differenttypes of organisations.
Those stakeholders arereally important to us, too.
We have the other strategic innovationprogrammes, as we also mentioned already.

(10:07):
They are 17, but also some of them, maybenot even a handful,
is closer to us because they workwith things that come close to IoT.
Those are stakeholders.
The universities all around Sweden andthe research, those are also stakeholders.

(10:32):
And then we have other differenttypes of communities like ourselves.
It doesn't need to bea strategic innovation programme.
It can be something else.
But organisations and people comingtogether to work for a certain purpose.
So we have several of these that are maybenot stakeholders all the time, sometimes.

(10:55):
But anyway, organisationsthat we need to work with.
And also sometimes much closer.
So there's a lot of more talks andcorporations that we need to build.
Yeah.Are there any international stakeholders
that are particularlyinteresting, would you say?
We do have to work with several, not maybestakeholders, but different countries.

(11:22):
And we have a development.
We've been working internationally
for a long time now, like the otherstrategic innovation programmes.
And we've focused on two things,I would say, in this work.

(11:42):
The first thing is that we are helping,
trying to help Swedish companiesdeliver their solutions abroad,
mostly Europe, but it couldalso be wider than Europe.
That is one thing.
And the other thing is
to highlight and contribute to the needof standards,

(12:05):
international standards for handlingall this data that we mentioned.
Those are two really, really bigthings about the international work.
Yeah, two good examples of what we do.
Let's talk about Swedishmunicipalities a bit.
I mean, you have extensive experience

(12:27):
on this topic, working bothin a municipality and with municipalities.
We often talk about collaboration betweenmunicipalities being incredibly important.
I mean, we shouldn't reinvent the wheel290 times, but instead help each other.

(12:48):
For our international listeners,there are 290 municipalities in Sweden,
so that's why we shouldn'treinvent the wheel 290 times.
But we also often talk about the challengeof not working in silos within
a municipality, but rather acrossadministrative boundaries.

(13:10):
So yet many municipalitiesare struggling with exactly this.
Why is it so difficult to share experienceand knowledge?
If we look at a certain municipality,
the internal perspective,we need to start with realising
just how wide those perspectives are,I mean, municipalities are doing a lot of things

(13:36):
and do have a lot of differenttasks at hand with different skills.
Sometimes, of course, co-work is needed
across the organisationwithin the municipality, but not to 100%

(13:57):
because there are also specialityskills in each part of the municipality.
So that's one thing we need to remember.
Sometimes the knowledge and the sharing
of solutions might need to bein a certain area of a municipality.

(14:23):
Sonot all the parts of the municipality
needs to co-work withother municipalities.
In general, one can go special per area.
So that is the challenge
and the possibility, as I see it,to realise how broad a municipality is

(14:48):
and to find really where thisco-work needs to be increased.
Why does IoT Swedenfocus on public sector?
That was a decision,but it wasn't a focus from the beginning.
It started out as more of a general
programme, and then it was identified likea need for this national programme.

(15:17):
It focuses on municipalities and public
sector and regionswhen it comes to using the solutions.
But the focus is also on companies and onuniversities and the knowledge building.
It's a combination of those thingsthat makes IoT Sweden what it is.

(15:42):
The user side or the demand side, you canfind it in the municipalities and regions.
But the programme itself
has a focus also on the ones that candeliver the solutions, mostly companies.
According to you,what are the biggest
challenges for a programmelike IoT Sweden?

(16:04):
I would say that the biggest challenge isthe same as the biggest strength,
and that is the holistic perspective.We talk about techniques,
but we also talk about the behaviouralpart of it, the people.
We don't choose.

(16:26):
We focus on public sector, regions,
municipalities and the companiesand the international perspective.
We don't really...
I mean, we choose to focus on IoT,but otherwise, we don't choose much.
We focus on a holistic perspective,and that is a real strength,

(16:49):
and it's asked for,but it's also a challenge,
especially when we are to endthis programme in three years.
Tell me a little a bit more about that,the last three years.
Yes.
We're in the end of a review,
the nine-year review,and from that, we will get,

(17:13):
or we already have started to geta lot of most valuable feedback
from experts of different kinds on howto focus during those three years.
It's a lot about makingthe most of what we've learned.
And also to suggesthow to proceed the work, even if

(17:35):
IoT Sweden as a strategic innovationprogramme doesn't exist anymore after
those 12 years, the questionsand the challenges still do exist.
We are to work a lot about
suggestions and ideas and strategicviews on how to proceed, not

(17:59):
to lose sight of or to lose the resultsthat we've made during these 12 years.
So it's really about an ending.
And if that sounds a little bit vagueat the moment, it's because it is.
That is the work we need to do now.
Yeah, we have that ahead of us.
We have that ahead of us.

(18:22):
Here comes a personal question.
What drives you in your work?
That is a lot about what I wastalking about in the beginning.
My strong belief in how techniquecan make people's lives better.

(18:43):
And that is also personal.
If I go back some generations,
like most of us,the techniques that we use today
haven't been there all the time whenit comes to electricity or water.
So one can think of all the relatives
and see what has happenedduring their lifetime.

(19:05):
It's not that old.
And also I did my master thesis
in Tanzania, and there I learned…It was about rural electrification.
Andthat is really, really strongly connected
to development of a society becauseit's about the ability to go to school.

(19:32):
If you have no electric lights whenit's dark, it's hard to do your homework.
So education and electrificationhas a very strong connexion.
And I've really seen that happening
in Tanzania, as it happened in Swedenonly about 100 years before.

(19:52):
Interesting.
Well, finally, you usually ask
us at the programme office to summariseour meetings with one word or a sentence.
So about this conversation, I would say,
looking forward to three more years.

(20:15):
What do you say, Catrin?
I'm very happy to be here,of course, in the studio.
But what I mean is in the programme, it'sa very exciting and not an easy job to do.
So I'm also looking forward to theseyears ahead.
We have a lot to do, but we alsohave a lot of possibilities.

(20:38):
We're so happy to haveyou here, Catrin.
Thanks a lot to Catrin Ditz, IoT Sweden'sprogramme director, for this conversation.
Thank you.
You've been listening to a podcastfrom IoT Sweden, a strategic innovation
programme funded by Vinnova,the Swedish Energy Agency, and Formas.

(21:00):
The music is written
by Johannes Bergenheim,and my name is Maria Bergenheim.