Inversity is a program supported by leading technology firms and government that aims to solve some of worlds ‘s most important challenges. It aims to help college students develop essential technology skills and an understanding of how to apply artificial intelligence to create solutions to real world problems. By doing so students develop a portfolio of skills on the Inversity platform that can help them stand out when applying for future university applications, apprenticeships and to the employers who pitch the Inversity challenges. We signed up 10 lower six Computer Science students to the Inversity platform in February 2024.
Each month an organisation pitches a real-world problem that they would like students to develop and presents a solution for. In February 2024 the organisation was the UK Government Digital Services (GDS) at GOV.UK. With over 20 million visitors a month this is one of the most used web services in the United Kingdom. GDS CEO Tom Read asked students to diagnose some of the challenges GOV.UK currently faces and then design and code potential solutions to these problems.
Despite only entering the challenge with 24 hours remaining (due to Aquinas only signing up to Inversity in late February) Harry’s pitch and solution won. Harry’s proposal was to personalise the GOV.UK platform to make it a much better user experience for visitor so they can easily find the services they want. Harry’s pitch and code can be found using the following links:-
Video of Harry’s Pitch
Source Code [GitHub]
Harry scored 58.5/80 in a competitive field of entries, edging the win by a single mark Tom Read (CEO of Government Digital Service) saying “Harry, this is a ludicrously good entry. You used the exact stat on government trust that I use when briefing Ministers. You nailed the problem definition. Your site looked beautiful. IN fact, I shared your entry with my team – they are going to implement the video/text preference button on some GOV.UK pages!”.
Harry won the £1000 challenge prize and a weeks internship at Public (an digital service who work closely with GOV.UK.
Well done Harry and good luck to our other Aquinas students on this month’s challenge provided by the Mercedez Formula 1 team.