We here in Ohio have seen a number of county offices ''update' or acquire new computer systems. I understand that a county computer systems over time become outdated and cannot be properly maintained. However, when these new systems go live one can just scratch one's head and say what were they thinking. I fully understand that these computer systems are never put in place to make title searching easier. Is a system just put in place to make it easier for a county office to compile reports? 

Recently I spent 45 minutes with an elected official on the phone trying to make sense of their new public records computer system. The more we spoke the more problems we discovered. Why is that? Did not anybody troubleshoot before allowing the PUBLIC RECORDS computer system go live? I truly appreciated the time this one elected official took out of his busy day to reach out to me and do all he could to train me on his office's new PUBLIC RECORDS computer system. At the conclusion of our 45 minutes on the phone I said to him "You are the County ... and I am an experienced real estate title professional of over 35 years and we both struggled with this system. Why is that? How can John Q. Public walk into your office and find what he is looking for? You have taken public access out of public records." He had no reply.

Some of the main and important functions of these county offices are record retention and record retrieval. If a system is so complicated that even the elected official and their support staff cannot easily retrieve public records what good is that system?