Many Sussex County employees are working with computer technology that’s at least 15 years old. Unnecessary financial spreadsheets and reports are created because the current systems in place do not allow integration among departments.

“County staff is still doing a great job with very limited tools,” said Timothy Masse, a consultant with Berry, Dunn, McNeil and Parker. The firm was hired at a cost of $46,271 to provide an in-depth analysis of the county’s technology and business processing.

On advice of consultants and a county committee, county council voted June 29 to proceed to replace county systems with integrated software through a competitive bidding process.

Masse said because county systems have been custom designed over the years, it would be costly to upgrade them when they can be replaced with newer technology.

Consultant Chad Snow estimated the upgrade at about $1.3 million, with annual costs of about $120,000 for maintenance. He said the project could proceed in stages over three to five years.

The county is also purchasing new equipment, with more than $585,000 in the capital budget for new computers, printers, scanners, software, firewall upgrades and servers. Of that total, $250,000 is for software for the five-year integration project.

The goals of the project are to eliminate inefficiencies, improve taxpayer services, improve internal controls, provide more information to the public and reduce the number of old, separate legacy systems, said Gina Jennings, director of accounting. Masse said benefits and potential savings of a new system are varied. He said the county could anticipate a savings of more than $30,000 annually in staff time spent processing transactions and an additional savings of 20 percent of the hours spent processing payroll.

A major savings, about 50 percent, would be realized in the time required to complete year-end financial closing processes, he said. Efficiency is the key word, Snow said, as county staff will rely less on paper-based processes with an integrated system.

“A problem that we have with the current system is the lack of functionality, which requires unnecessary manual processes,” Jennings said. “For example, the current general ledger does not support some government accounting regulations, so to stay compliant, the accounting department must keep a separate set of books manually in order to produce required financial reports.”