How Economic Developers are Using AI to Improve Efficiency

How Economic Developers are Using AI to Improve Efficiency

Economic developers in the American South are exploring a variety of ways to use AI for improving efficiency, dramatically cutting down the time spent on data research, board reporting, and lead generation. By automating routine writing and synthesizing vast community data, practitioners can focus more heavily on strategic business retention, community planning, and investment attraction.

OZ Selection Portal (Louisiana)

Louisiana Economic Development (LED) utilized artificial intelligence (AI) to support the development of its new OZ Selection Portal. This interactive mapping tool is designed to help partners across the state make informed, locally driven census tract recommendations for Opportunity Zones (OZ) 2.0, the next round of the federal tax incentive designed to encourage private investment in designated low-income communities. Developed by LED staff, with AI serving as a programming collaborator and technical thought partner, the portal provides regional stakeholders a practical, user-friendly way to evaluate eligible tracts, review key economic and community data, and submit recommendations for consideration by state leadership.

As LED established its OZ 2.0 recommendation process in coordination with the Governor’s Office, the agency worked closely with Louisiana’s Regional Economic Development Organizations (REDOs), rural stakeholders, and other partners to ensure local expertise remained central to decision-making. State officials recognized that these partners are best positioned to understand the assets, needs, and investment opportunities within their communities. LED’s goal was to complement that expertise with a streamlined tool that simplified participation and reduced the administrative burden throughout the recommendation process.

The OZ Selection Portal features an interactive map of eligible census tracts that REDO partners can navigate to explore additional information on regional assets by toggling data layers on and off. These layers include information on educational institutions, New Markets Tax Credit eligibility, poverty and income metrics, LED Certified Sites, Louisiana Main Street districts, rural healthcare facilities, and other regional assets. Within the portal, users were able to identify and select recommended census tracts while also providing narrative context to explain how those tracts align with local priorities and economic development opportunities. By making the process easier to navigate, the portal saved time and ensured the state was able to capture the local knowledge, strategic context, and community priorities behind each recommendation.

AI helped LED move from concept to implementation without relying on traditional web-development resources. Staff used AI to support coding, spatial calculations, data layering, and user-interface development, ultimately creating a customized application uniquely suited to Louisiana’s OZ census tract recommendation process.

The result was a more accessible, user-friendly, and consistent recommendation framework. AI played a key role in the development of the OZ Selection Portal, enabling the formalized, data-supported collection of recommended census tracts across the state. The application not only equipped local leaders with better information, but also collected clearer, more standardized recommendations to help guide Louisiana’s OZ 2.0 decisions. At the same time, it helped keep the process focused on what mattered most: identifying tracts with the strongest connections to regional assets, community needs, and future investment opportunities.

Automated Workflows (Kentucky)

Sankalp Banerjee and Kirat Singh, Co-Founders of Insitu, and Colby Kirk, President and CEO of One East Kentucky (OEK), were first introduced through a mutual connection at a conference in Washington, DC. The three of them recognized the potential of the East Kentucky region and saw an opportunity to integrate AI to enhance OEK’s operational capabilities.

OEK became a pilot project for Insitu as the team developed a custom AI platform tailored to OEK’s two-person staff. Managing economic development activities across an entire region presents substantial challenges, particularly given the size and rural nature of the area. The Insitu team automated site-screening workflows, enabling OEK to rapidly narrow thousands of potential parcels to a shortlist of viable sites for prospect consideration.

“The way we like to think about organizations transforming is: What if you had 50 additional team members, all of whom are specialists on individual tasks?” Banerjee said. “We think about those team members in today’s world as AI agents, not to replace, but to enhance the work of economic developers, who are really experts at what they do.”

“I think the first iteration of the tool helped us more efficiently identify site opportunities when we have an RFI come in or when we meet with a company and they’re looking for sites with certain characteristics,” said Kirk.

Through Insitu’s custom AI platform, OEK can quickly examine extensive datasets on every parcel in the region, including topography and distance to utility sources.

“That’s where I think the most value comes in AI,” Kirk said. “It helps synthesize inexplicably large quantities of data and makes them useful for you.”

The platform also proved valuable at a conference in Dallas when Kirk met with the CEO of a large aerospace firm. Using the AI tool, he was able to do quick research, learn about the company’s recent expansion in another state, and identify two sites in his own region that met the same standards.

While this AI platform has elevated OEK’s efficiency, it has grown far beyond its initial iteration. The platform now serves as an assistant in business attraction efforts, RFI responses, trade show preparation, and executive meeting planning. It has enabled OEK's two-person team to respond to prospects, RFIs, and site-selection inquiries with a level of speed and sophistication typically associated with much larger economic development organizations.