Calvert County, Maryland won three 2026 National Association of Counties (NACo) Achievement Awards for technology work. The Maryland Association of Counties described them in an August 26, 2026 post. One award covers a billing portal that residents use directly. The other two cover how county employees learn and use technology, AI included.
A billing portal for water and sewer customers
Calvert County runs its own water and sewer service, so a utility bill is one of the most common reasons a resident deals with county government. The county upgraded its self-service portal to add guest payments, real-time water consumption tracking, better account management, and updated payment technology for residents who still pay in person. A January 2025 report said the portal serves about 5,000 water and sewer customers. People can pay without logging in, submit service requests, and look at past bills and consumption history.
The county reports that online payments rose from about 500 to more than 1,200 transactions within the first three months. By the fourth quarter of 2025 it counted 1,518 credit card payments, 856 customers enrolled in automatic bank (ACH) payments, and 3,028 unique portal accounts.
Teaching county employees to use the tools
The other two awards recognize internal training. The AI Change Champion Network guides the county’s use of ChatGPT Enterprise. It pairs early policy guardrails with department-level champions in 20 departments, in-house training, and license governance. The county reports 127 members, 119 of them active, and says employees built 173 custom GPTs and 141 projects.
The Digital Readiness and Technology Proficiency Program is less flashy. It combines annual digital literacy training, standardized Microsoft 365 onboarding for new employees, and proficiency checks. Staff who fall below a threshold get targeted training in tools such as Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint.
Separately, Calvert ranked sixth in the “Population Less than 150,000” category of the 2026 Digital Counties Survey, according to Government Technology. That ranking comes from a different survey and says nothing about the billing portal.
Why It Matters to You
If you are one of Calvert’s water and sewer customers, the portal is the part you can use today: you can pay without logging in, let someone else pay as a guest, watch your water use, and send a service request. Usage data can help a household notice a leak sooner than a quarterly paper bill would. The employee programs matter to residents only indirectly, since they are about staff skills and not a service you log into. The county’s sources describe AI use by employees through ChatGPT Enterprise, not a resident-facing AI service.
What the awards do and don’t tell us
Nearly every number here comes from the county and the award write-up, not from an independent evaluation. The jump from 500 to 1,200 monthly online payments does not say how many office visits were avoided, and no time-saved figure has been published. The county does not say whether in-person payments fell, so “fewer trips to the county office” is a reasonable inference, not a measured result. The county has also not published figures on leaks found, gallons saved, or dollars saved, so we cannot say how often the leak-spotting benefit actually happens.
The employee AI figures count users and tools built. They do not measure faster service for residents. And awards show peer recognition of a project, not cost savings or resident satisfaction. Has the county shown that any of this saves money? Not in the sources we reviewed: they report usage and payment counts, not cost or time savings. The network’s size is also worth stating precisely: 127 members, with 119 active.
Quick answers
What did Calvert County win?
Three 2026 NACo Achievement Awards: one for the utility billing self-service upgrade, one for the AI Change Champion Network, and one for the digital readiness and proficiency program.
What can residents do in the billing portal?
Pay online, let someone else pay as a guest, view real-time water use, view past bills, and submit service requests, according to county reports.
Does the county use AI to answer residents?
The source describes AI use by county employees through ChatGPT Enterprise. It does not describe a resident-facing AI service.
Sources
- Conduit Street: Calvert County’s Digital Transformation Earns Three National Awards (Aug 26, 2026)
- Conduit Street: Calvert County Launches Innovative Online Utility Portal (Jan 23, 2025)
- Government Technology: Winners Announced 2026 Digital Counties Survey (Jul 15, 2026)