Counties are also responsible for housing, some electric and water utilities, waste treatment, telecommunications and emergency broadcasts. With all of these responsibilities, it is not surprising that counties have connections that are far reaching. They are connected to the federal and state governments and to the cities, towns and municipalities within the county. Trial records, for example, stay at the local level. They also have connections with law firms, real estate organizations and banking.
County governments generate a lot of revenue.
Just as in large businesses, as the applications were ported from one platform to another, more of the code was in the machine language, making it more difficult to know what the code was and what it was doing. This also makes it more difficult to fix. Smaller counties have had LAN based systems since the 1980's. The level of county readiness is difficult to assess because it is based almost exclusively on self-reporting the answers to the survey done in November. The survey covered 500 counties or about one sixth of the total number in the country.