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Fair ~ River stage: 34 Rising Saturday, November 21, 2009 |
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Cape Girardeau County's computers to get rewiredTuesday, August 26, 2008Cape Girardeau County's mainframe computer and many of the cables used to connect it to workers' stations are 20 years old, ancient by most technology standards. Eric McGowen, the county's information technology director, is in the process of getting proposals to replace the old computer equipment. "We have completely outgrown our existing cabling structure," he wrote in an e-mail, adding that some cabling dates back to 1987. "We have sure gotten our money's worth." Though the equipment is functional, it can't easily handle modern-day demands, such as bulky geographic information systems (GIS) map files. It can't handle online payments -- although the county recently purchased software that will. McGowen estimated the cost of the improvement at $70,000, but said responses for the county's request for proposal will be more specific. The cost of the upgrade will be paid from the county's information technology project fund, he said. One of the main reasons for updating the equipment is a yearlong project to update software for the county assessor and collector offices, which should be finished by the middle of 2009. McGowen said the software needs more bandwidth -- capacity to deliver data -- than the current system allows. The current bandwidth is 10 megabits per second; the upgrade will bring it to 1,000 megabits. The mainframe-and-cable setup primarily works with what McGowen called "green screen terminal emulation," which is simple text, often colored green, on a black background. McGowan said each floor of the building would have individual cabling -- with a high-speed fiber optic connection to other floors -- that will further speed computing and provide for more flexible upgrades and repairs. The new county system would allow McGowen and other technology workers and vendors to access the system from other locations. firewall/VPN (virtual private network) to allow secure access to the county network from other locations. He said the new technology is unrelated to plans to update the county's website. "The county has many more computers in use than the current infrastructure supports. Several places, we have had to use hubs to attach multiple devices to a single cable. This forces those computers to share the available bandwidth between them. Also, cabling technology has evolved considerably since 1987." The existing cabling supports 10mbps speeds to the desktop; the new installation will support 1,000mbps speed (a gigabit), he said. The public will also benefit from the improvement, McGowen said, because a free public wireless service will be added to the county administration building. It's part of a plan to add a separate internal wireless service to allow county employees to use laptops and other mobile devices in the building. He said he was not sure if members of the public would have to get some form of pass to use the service. "We'll have to see what the proposals say," he said. 335-6611, extension 127 Comments  Note: The nature of the Internet makes it impractical for our staff to review every comment. If you feel that a comment is offensive, please Login or Create an account first, and then you will be able to flag a comment as objectionable. Please also note that those who post comments on semissourian.com may do so using a screen name, which may or may not reflect a website user's actual name. Readers should be careful not to assign comments to real people who may have names similar to screen names. Refrain from obscenity in your comments, and to keep discussions civil, don't say anything in a way your grandmother would be ashamed to read.
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Will this upgrade allow county residents to renew their vehicle licenses online like most other counties in the state?
duuhh...your vehicle license is MO Dept of Revenue.
Duuhh—
There is a provision on your renewal application that allows the DMV to determine if you've paid your county personal property taxes for the previous year, but only if that particular county has the software available to do it. Cape County has not in the past. Have you ever renewed a vehicle license?
In the past Cape County sent property tax data to the DOR on magnetic tape. Good for the times, but only if you paid your taxes by 12-31. Otherwise it might take a while to show up at the DOR.
Actually, you're both technically correct. The reason that online license renewal is not working, in short:
Cape Girardeau County prepares a file containing paid personal property tax information, in a format requested by the MO Department of Revenue. The Dept. of Rev. takes this file, imports it into their database, and checks it to verify taxes are paid. If taxes are paid, online license renewal is allowed.
A couple of years ago, Dept. of Revenue changed the layout and format of the file to be sent from each county. Cape Girardeau County's existing software cannot create a file that conforms to the Dept. of Revenue's specifications, so online license renewal became unavailable.
Last year, the county entered into an agreement with Tyler Technologies/CLT to replace the existing software with an updated Collector and Assessor software package. The software is currently scheduled to go live midway through 2009. At that time, Cape Girardeau County plans to resume online license renewal, as a file can then be generated in a format acceptable to the Dept. of Revenue. It's not related to the RFP issued last week, but it is something that is in the works.
Thanks for the question, RocketSurgeon.
And thanks for the answer, Bluenova! :)