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.”