The use of the term "smartness" in the context of public service delivery indicates an ambition of the public sector to become more agile and resilient through the adoption of emerging technologies. The Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging technology that will be key to the realisation of smart public services. The research presented in this paper explored the role of IoT in public sector innovation through a qualitative study of how IoT technology can be leveraged to create and deliver smart winter road maintenance services. We use an existing smartness frameworkbased on the dimensions of efficiency, effectiveness, transparency and collaborationto examine the consequences of introducing IoT-based innovation to road maintenance services. The findings suggest that IoT enables public sector innovation and that smartness is created through the combination of technology, people and organisations. The realisation of smartness in public sector innovation requires sufficient management capabilities and robust technology strategies, along with a willingness to explore and adopt new work practices rather than simply implement emerging technologies.

In recent years, Internet of Things (IoT) has gained presence in all areas of life. Whilst private sector is the forerunner in the adoption of these devices, public sector usage has been lagging. With the rise of smart initiatives, public organizations are increasingly implementing IoT. The necessity to know in which areas of public sector IoT has been implemented and what public value has been derived, has gained importance as reporting of the cost efficiency and benefits of these initiatives has gained attention. This paper seeks to determine the importance of IoT in the public sector from the perspective of public value. IoT implementation in Estonian municipalities was studied to provide concrete data on the use of IoT. Next to efficiency, which is a known goal of IT implementation, the research findings suggest that while IoT has generated public value, there has been a shift in value creation with other outcomes such as effectiveness, transparency and collaboration gaining increased presence. While IoT shows great promise for public value creation, more research is needed to study how public sector can leverage these devices to harvest more benefits than the simple automatization of work processes.