The N.C Department of Information Technology team supporting the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries has been named a 2026 AI 50 Award winner in the State Project category by the Center for Public Sector AI, which recognizes governments driving responsible and innovative use of AI. The division is part of the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality.
“Being recognized nationally validates the innovative work our team has been doing, but the real success is what it means for North Carolina,” said Marine Fisheries IT Section Chief Stephanie McInerny. “Every improvement we make helps the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality deliver better data, faster decisions, and stronger protection of our state's natural resources.”
The team put AI to work to modernize the Marine Fisheries’ Biological Database – the backbone of how North Carolina tracks the health of its marine resources and species. The database helps the state make decisions that affect fishing communities, protect habitats, and respond quickly when coastal conditions change.
Built on outdated code that only a handful of people could understand, the old system held more than 30 million records dating to the 1960s. The team used generative AI to translate these old codes and rebuild important parts of the system into a modern, secure web application.
Script conversions that once took 120 hours each were reduced to 10 hours, and bug fixes that previously took two to three days were resolved in two to three hours.
The results speak for themselves:
- The new system replaces more than a dozen aging tools with one streamlined application.
- Finding information is about 10 times faster.
- Editing and verifying data now takes half the time.
- By making these improvements, the state saved an estimated $340,000 in consultant costs over two years – for an AI licensing bill of just $600 a year.
The team continues to expand its work. For example:
- It is exploring machine learning to help scientists estimate the age of fish samples so they can better track fish populations and make decisions about fishing and conservation.
- It is using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to digitize paper records and handwritten notes to reduce manual work and speed up data entry to help staff make better decisions. The move is expected to create up to $2 million in savings and value.
In an era where every state faces legacy technical debt, workforce turnover, and growing cybersecurity demands, this project sets a model for using AI to responsibly modernize government systems – augmenting human expertise to accelerate timelines, scale staff capacity, and help Marine Fisheries get trustworthy data faster to decision-makers managing North Carolina's fisheries and coastal ecosystems.
This project is a great example of what's possible when practical, responsible AI use meets deep institutional knowledge, and it's a testament to the persistence and creativity of the team behind it.
The Marine Fisheries team will receive the award in a virtual ceremony on Aug. 11.