[Fair use for education and research purpose only]

Title: Computer Glitch Slows Civil Court System

Northampton County official says the problems with new software are being solved.

04/07/00

By SCOTT KRAUS Of The Morning Call

Lower Saucon Township's Robert Rudas was perturbed.

A professional title researcher, Rudas had just suffered through a computer crash Thursday in the Northampton County prothonotary's office.

That was not his only beef. Since the county courts switched to a new computer system at the start of the year, Rudas has been unable to guarantee his clients that no liens exist against their property.

That's because liens filed since Dec. 15 -- county officials say they are current to early February -- had not been entered into the computer system because it wasn't working properly.

The records exist as paper but tey can't be reliably searched, Rudas said.

"It is frustrating," he said. "I cannot certify a title as being free of problems past Dec. 15."

Rudas' concerns are part of lingering glitches with the county courts' conversion to a new computer system. Computerized records in several civil departments such as Orphan's Court and the prothonotary's office are still not up to date.

Court Administrator James Onembo said the county is turning the corner in dealing with the problems, which began early this year as the county switched to software provided by Progressive Solutions of Salt Lake City.

The new software, data conversion, support and training will cost about $700,000, said the firm's president, Arthur L. Brady.

The problems seemed so intractable in February that Onembo sent a letter to County Council saying he planned to meet with Progressive officials in March in a last-ditch effort to solve the problems.

Since then, Progressive has increased its efforts, and Onembo said the system should be fully functional by July.

"The criminal system is running fairly well now," Onembo said.

Brady said his company has agreed to fix all problems by July 30 and that two-thirds of a punch list of about 60 items discussed at the March meeting have been remedied.

"There is no question that we have taken longer for a number of things on our part than we should have," he said.

Much of the problem was caused by unforeseen difficulties in converting 20 years of data from the county's old mainframe system to a format that fit a PC-based network, Onembo said.

To catch up and guarantee accuracy, the county hired four temporary workers to manually enter criminal case information into the system.

Those employees work for the civil courts and enter data that was not entered while the system wasn't working.

Two weeks ago, the county started mandatory overtime in its civil court division, requiring employees to spend eight extra hours a week entering information, including the judgments Rudas complained about, said Gerald Seyfried, director of court services.

County Council member Ann McHale, who has been hearing complaints about the glitches for weeks from lawyer and real estate friends, said she is glad to hear the county is getting a handle on the problems.

But its efforts won't come for free, she said.

"They are going to have to come to us for more money in their budget because of all the overtime," she said of the court system. "When you have this much overtime -- and it is mandatory overtime -- those dollars only go so far."

Onembo and Seyfried said they could not estimate Thursday how much the overtime and temporary workers will cost this year.

) 2000 THE MORNING CALL Inc.

http://www.mcall.com/html/news/easton/b43a3courts.htm

========================

-- (Dee360Degree@aol.com), April 07, 2000