The North Carolina Treasurer’s Department announced it will integrate artificial intelligence into its daily operations.
The department wrote that the decision comes after an AI pilot program from spring 2025. The team held weekly calls with engineers at its partner, OpenAI, to troubleshoot and develop the program. The pilot program ran for 12 weeks and the team saw a 10% increase in productivity, according to analysis conducted at North Carolina Central University.
“We have a moral obligation to the taxpayer to use their money wisely. That means improving the efficiency of everything we do as state government,” North Carolina treasurer Brad Briner wrote in the April 13 press release.
Throughout the department, staff tested AI products such as Copilot, GitHub and other generative AI tools to create an AI sandbox meant to assist with various day-to-day operations. The team now has more than 150 licenses for products such as OpenAI and chatbot software. Employees of the Treasurer’s Office have also completed several training programs to better use AI as a resource.
In an interview with Elon News Network, Eric Naisbitt, head of staff at the North Carolina Treasurer’s Office, said the unclaimed property division is a prime example of how AI has improved productivity.
The unclaimed property division is responsible for safeguarding money and assets that have been lost or forgotten by their rightful owners and ensuring they are available to be reclaimed. Items such as dormant bank accounts, uncashed checks, insurance payouts and utility deposits are identified daily. Naisbitt said identifying CFOs, billing managers and other contacts to help reconnect property previously took significant time. Now, with the implementation of AI, those searches can be done almost instantaneously.
“For local governments they really want to do the analytical work, they don’t want to do emails, they don’t want to do phone calls, they don’t want to do scheduling,” Naisbitt said. “It’s interesting seeing how different groups use the tool differently and maximize their productivity based on what they want to be doing at work and what they don’t want to be doing.”
According to the press release, security is also a major aspect of the department’s AI policy. No personal or private data will be input into the AI sandbox. The department is also required to complete ethical use training before receiving access to the AI tools, according to Naisbitt.
“More importantly is our current iteration is a model in which the information isn’t going into the larger algorithm to learn on itself.” Naisbitt said, meaning the information being input by the treasury into its AI system is not feeding into larger generative AI models, helping prevent sensitive information from being exposed.
The security of their system was a top priority for the department according to Lawrence Koffa, the IT Chief Information Officer for the NC Treasurer’s Office.
“It’s my team’s responsibility to make sure private and personal information never leaks from our department. Safety and security are paramount,” Koffa said in the press release.
Although the treasurer’s office expects to see more AI implemented in government agencies in the future, Naisbitt said he wants to ensure AI is not used as a replacement for human labor.
“We’ve hired and we have a group of really good staff on hand. And we want them to get better at their jobs.” Naisbitt said “This is not a way to replace the human element of this, but rather enhance the human element of this.”
Lee Rainie, Elon University’s director of the Imagining the Digital Future Center said he believes the addition of AI practices into the treasurer’s office is just a small piece of the puzzle that is becoming AI’s relationships with government, especially because of the tenuous relationship many Americans have with government.
“There are benefits at stake. There are policies at stake. There are general issues about trust,” Rainie said. “One of the big stories of the modern era is that people have lost trust in government at every level of government.”
He said that by implementing AI into daily processes the government can find an opportunity to gain public trust by improving the quality of their work but they also must prioritize preserving public faith by protecting the private and personal information they have.
“You’re a citizen, right? And you pay taxes. You vote. You have a stake in the policies that are being created by government agencies because they’re supposed to act in the public good,” Rainie said. “So there are ways in which the sort of, very fundamental elements of being a citizen are implicated in these relationships.”