Visited a rural county assessor's office and saw their construction software setup from 2004

Ngl I had to go to the county assessor's office in rural Wyoming last week for a permit lookup. The lady pulled up a DOS-based program on a CRT monitor to check records. She told me they've been using the same software since 2004 because the upgrade cost $12K and the county won't approve it. I watched her manually type in parcel numbers using a beige keyboard with yellowed keys. The monitor had that classic flicker you don't see anymore. Has anyone else run into ancient government software that just refuses to die?

2 comments

2 Comments

sage_lewis1011d ago

Jesus, what is it with these county offices and ancient tech? @jesse84 you got off easy with just a paper ledger, that Wyoming clerk's DOS system was honestly kinda cool to see in person. But watching her hunt and peck on a yellowed keyboard for 15 minutes made me realize why property records take forever around here. Did they at least let you watch the CRT flicker?

jesse8411d ago

My uncle was one of those guys who always said upgrading software was a waste of money, and I kinda agreed with him. Then I went with my dad to the county courthouse in Topeka last summer to fight a property tax issue, and I watched this clerk flip through a paper ledger from 1997 to find our parcel history. It took her 20 minutes to pull up something that could have taken 30 seconds on a modern system. That trip definitely changed my mind about these old setups being fine.