Hawaii Annual Innovation Challenge

The Hawai’i Annual Innovation Challenge (HAIC)

The Hawai’i Annual Innovation Challenge brings together students, professionals, and community members to solve real problems facing state government, with a focus on leveraging artificial intelligence and emerging technologies to improve how Hawai’i serves its residents.

A New Era of Innovation

As AI reshapes what’s possible in government, HAIC is evolving to meet the moment. This year’s challenge introduces two competition categories:

• Traditional Tech Solution: Teams design and develop a technology solution using AI tools to address a provided challenge statement.
• AI-Developed Planning and Improvement Challenge: Teams work directly with state agencies to apply AI to one of the agency’s most urgent business problems, focusing on improving planning, workflows, decision-making, or data utilization.

Teams compete in a category based on the challenge they choose, collaborating with agency partners to build solutions that create lasting public value.

Our History

Originally launched in 2016 as the Hawai’i Annual Code Challenge (HACC), the program was conceived by Gov. David Ige to encourage civic engagement between the local technology community and state government. Unlike a traditional weekend hackathon, it provided an extended multi-week timeframe for community teams to collaborate with state department personnel, resulting in sustainable, real-world solutions.  The HACC successfully continued through our current Governor Josh Green.

Over a decade, the program generated proof-of-concepts from student, amateur, and professional participants that benefited state agencies and the broader community, strengthened Hawai’i’s IT workforce pipeline, and earned national recognition with the State IT Innovation of the Year award by StateScoop.

As participants increasingly leveraged AI, automation, and data science far beyond traditional coding, the program outgrew its original name. The rebrand to HAIC reflects this evolution and the diverse skill sets now shaping Hawai’i’s digital future.

What’s Next

The inaugural Hawai’i Annual Innovation Challenge kicks off on October 24th via Zoom and culminates with judging on November 21, 2026, at the University of Hawai’i – West O’ahu. ETS remains committed to empowering innovation, nurturing talent, and supporting a thriving local tech ecosystem.

As State CIO Christine Sakuda noted: “Renaming the event to the Hawai’i Annual Innovation Challenge highlights how our community has grown over the past decade. Today’s solutions draw from a wide range of disciplines, including emerging AI tools that are reshaping the way government can serve our residents.”

THE COMMITTEE