04/19/02

By JOE CARLSON
The Express-Times

EASTON - Northampton County officials pulled the plug Thursday on a custom-written computer program that had been touted as the Holy Grail of solutions for recurrent problems with title searches in the office of the county’s chief archivist, the prothonotary.

County Prothonotary Holly Ruggiero said the piece of software, called the civil index, was taken off line after concerns arose that the system may not be 100 percent accurate. It’s only been online for two weeks, and she could not say when it would be back up.

Just after 4 p.m. Thursday, Ruggiero said she already had been on the phone three times with officials at Utah-based Tiburon, Inc., which wrote the $70,000 piece of software for Northampton County.

Administration Director James Hickey said Thursday’s glitch does not change the administration’s stance on the software, but Nazareth title searcher Bernie O’Hare said the problem confirms his contentions about the inadequacy of the system.

Hickey and other administrators maintain that the searchers need more training on how to use the software because many of the glitches result from user error, not program bugs. Searchers say it’s waste of time to train on a system that doesn’t work.

"Today a bug was identified in the system," Hickey said Thursday. "Would it be better if there were no bugs? Yes. But there’s not a custom software package out there that doesn’t have bugs."

O’Hare said Thursday’s closure confirms his contention that the information retrieved through the FACTS system is not reliable. He has advocated for a new software package, but says he would use the current system if the administration could restore his faith in it.

"If they can convincingly show us that the FACTS system works, fine, we’ll use it," O’Hare said. "This one does not work. That’s the problem."

In order to insure title transactions, title insurance agents hire searchers to make sure that there are no liens or judgments against property that could torpedo a sale.

On Thursday, O’Hare said the FACTS software could only retrieve three of the four judgments that a certain company has been involved in. He would not name the company - "out of fairness to them," he said - but county officials took the civil index off line after the searchers brought the problem to their attention.

This is not the first time the county’s software, which has a long history of problems, has made headlines.

Former County Executive Bill Brackbill awarded a $483,000 contract to Progressive Solutions. Inc. in July 1997 to replace the county’s cobbled mainframe with an integrated database and software.

Bugs plagued the system, but the company went belly-up before the glitches could be resolved.

Tiburon bought PSI in July 2000, hired 20 former PSI employees and began entering into contracts with the vast majority of PSI’s former clients, according to county contract documents and interviews.

Northampton County officials put out a Request for Proposals in late 2000 but only one company had submitted a bid. County officials were stunned to find that the bid from Allentown-based Coulbourn Instruments was for $2.5 million - about nine times more than expected.

County Executive Glenn Reibman called the Coulbourn proposal "unacceptable and began negotiations with Tiburon.

In late January and early February 2001, Tiburon officials conducted a survey of users of the system. The review noted that title searchers were very displeased with the PSI software and concluded that the development of a civil index module was the No. 1 priority for the civil division.

The county cut the $479,000 contract with Tiburon in March 2001, yet the civil index was not brought online until April 4, 2002 - the same day that county council took a vote of no confidence in Reibman’s handling of the software problems.

Appearing before council April 4, Tiburon Vice President Gary Bunyard admitted the company has not addressed the problems with the software as quickly as it should have.

"The problem has simply been a resource issue within Tiburon," Bunyard told council. "I see no reasons why the remaining issues cannot be resolved within a two to three week time schedule. But it will require a significant amount of work."

Bunyard could not be reached for comment Thursday.

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-- Anonymous, April 20, 2002