AI Innovation Challenges

Theme: “How might we…”

Challenge Day: Thursday 15th October 2026

Overview

“How Might We…” prompts for the Trusted AI decision-support challenge pick one and run with it. Each is framed as an open “How Might We” question so you can shape your own solution, but comes with a real user, a decision to support, and the trust twist that makes it worth doing. Whatever you choose, scope it to one decision, one user, synthetic or public data — and remember the AI assists, a human decides

Tasks

1. Housing maintenance triage HMW: How might we help a housing maintenance coordinator prioritise urgent repairs across remote NT communities without “efficiency” quietly pushing remote tenants to the back of the queue?

2. Grant eligibility assessment HMW: How might we help a grants officer assess applications consistently and produce reasons a rejected applicant could actually understand and challenge?

3. Information-access (FOI) request triage HMW: How might we help an information officer find the records relevant to a request while guaranteeing a human reviews anything sensitive before it’s released?

4. Risk-based inspection prioritisation HMW: How might we help a regulator decide where to send limited inspectors first, without the model just re-checking wherever it looked last time?

5. Getting urgent messages to a human, fast HMW: How might we make sure a vulnerable person’s urgent message never gets buried in a high-volume government inbox and reaches a human quickly?

6. Making sense of long documents without over-trusting the AI HMW: How might we help a caseworker get through a backlog of long policy or case documents faster, without nudging them into trusting a summary they haven’t verified?

Resources

Participants may utilise the following resources, split into datasets and development tools:

Datasets

NT Remote Areas Mobile Coverage
ADII (Australian Digital Inclusion Index) Dashboard
National Broadband Network (NBN) dataset
ACCC Mobile Infrastructure Report – data release
Tropical cyclone reports
First Nations Connectivity Mapping Tool
ACMA Site Location Map
ABS TableBuilder
Other public datasets relevant to connectivity, geography, or community demographics

Tools

Python & related data analysis libraries
AI / Machine Learning libraries
Public data APIs
Other development, visualisation and mapping tools

Eligibility

Teams of 2–4 enrolled CDU IT coursework students (undergraduate, postgraduate, TAFE & short courses). Higher Degree by Research students are not eligible.

Evaluation

Judging Criteria

Submissions will be judged according to the following criteria: datasets, overall creativity and originality, technical sophistication, contextual relevance and practicality, ethical considerations and presentation.

First winner and runner up will be selected.

Panel of Judges

Bruno Braga

Executive Director – Digital Government
Department of Corporate and Digital Development
Northern Territory Government

Sarah Strzelecki

Department of Corporate and Digital Development
Northern Territory Government

Mohammad Aurangzeb Khan

Department of Corporate and Digital Development
Northern Territory Government

Sandeep Rasali

Department of Corporate and Digital Development
Northern Territory Government

1. Team Up

Teams of 2–4 enrolled CDU IT coursework students (undergraduate, postgraduate, TAFE & short courses). Higher Degree by Research students are not eligible.

2. Submission

Submission items:
1. Project report (Requirement Link)
2. Source code (Python with remarks for the key steps) with a README file containing reproducing instructions.

Submission Deadline: 30th September 2026 (Submission Link)