You might ask yourself; “why was this all necessary?”
Iroquois County was one of a very few remaining counties in Illinois that was still using it’s own in house developed system and that system was on the verge of collapse. The county’s Property Tax system was well over 20 years old, poorly managed and even more poorly maintained. The software was running on file servers and personal computers that were no longer supported. The tipping point arrived when Micro Focus bought out Liant Cobol for its PL/I development application. The County’s Property Tax system was using Liant’s Cobol and was a risk of going unsupported also.
“The county is having financial difficulties now, could this have waited?”
No. With the single largest source of operating revenue for the County at risk, this needed to happen ASAP. The County’s original Property Tax System was on the verge of collapse.
Designed and maintained “in house” and over 20 years old, the Property Tax system had become unreliable and unmanageable. Illinois Department of Revenue reporting changes became increasingly more difficult to implement. Several years of neglect, lack of standards for software development, and a complete disregard for best practices, had left the Property Tax software in shambles.
In September 2004 a comprehensive problem management system was installed. Once in place the Problem and Change Management system identified, tracked, and resolved well over 100 serious functional flaws in the Property Tax System alone.
If nothing had been done, it would have been increasingly difficult for the County to keep up with mandated changes from the Illinois Department of Revenue. Recruiting and compensating QUALIFIED application developers to maintain the old Property Tax system would have become increasingly more difficult.
Out sourcing Property Tax administration to DEVNET brings in a group of very talented and knowable individuals and is just good business.