NORWICH – Computerized maps of every town and village in Chenango County were lost and had to be recreated after the county upgraded to a new mainframe server late last year.
The work took two employees three weeks to complete.
Printing maps for customers remains an issue, however. According to Planning and Development Director Donna M. Jones, a recent order took two days to print.
“We’re still having pathway problems,” she said. “The switch fried our hard drive.”
Servers become obsolete every five years, said Information Technology Department Director Frank Tiffany, and need to be replaced. The upgrade will also accommodate an increasing amount of data. The transition began in October, and all departments were moved over last month. Tiffany was unaware of any other county offices that experienced similar problems.
“This has to do with expertise in programming as far as Geological Information Systems go. Each department would have to develop their own expertise with GIS,” he said.
Jones requested technological assistance with the GIS system from her standing committee last week.
“IT doesn’t have the capability to straighten out the GIS,” said Jones. “We continue to have requests by natural gas drillers and others, and may need help from the outside to fix this.”
In a discussion of a consultant’s cost, members of the Planning and Economic Development Committee suggested that several departments should participate.
“GIS should be utilized by all, emergency, social services, planning, tax, highways, everybody,” said Supervisor Jerry L. Kreiner, R-Plymouth.
Committee Chairperson Linda E. Natoli, R-City of Norwich, said her committee should be responsible for providing a GIS system “that everybody would want to use.”
The county purchased the original system in 2003 and has since added features, such as an inventory of water and sewer locations in Chenango County. However, Natoli said there has been six years of discussion about how departments could be utilizing the system to its fullest capacity.
“I don’t mean to get on a soap box here, and we have excellent department heads, but when one would say, ‘No,’ a project just falls off the end of the table. Now we are in crisis mode,” she said.
Natoli suggested fixing the printing glitch now and getting all departments on board later.
Supervisor Jack Cook of Greene compared Planning to the Real Property Tax Services Department which charges towns and villages $250 a year for GIS services. “Planning could be a stand alone service for everything (all GIS requests) being done,” he said.
Jones said some counties have GIS coordinators.
“This committee should do more. Maybe this is would be our first goal,” Natoli said.
Kreiner asked why there was no back up system for the maps. Jones said the hard drive was the back up system.
“What if it were payroll?” asked Natoli. “I fail to believe that’s not backed up.”
No decision was made on hiring a GIS consultant, however, because the committee lacked a quorum.