Carbon County is spending over $600,000 to update its court case management system in three offices.

On Thursday, the board of commissioners approved an agreement with Tyler Technologies Odyssey Case Management system to replace the Anita Civil Case Management system for court administration, the prothonotary and register of wills/orphans court offices.

The implementation of the new system will cost $604,840; with additional costs for software service fees over five years that cost approximately $100,000 each year.

Greg Armstrong, court administrator, said that the new system will replace a service that was put in place in 1978 by a local computer programmer.

It will help with the scheduling, hearing notices and coordination between the two main filing offices, as well as meeting the needs of the judges going forward.

Once the upgrade begins, it will take 13 months for the project to be completed, Armstrong said, noting that it will include a lot of data mapping, training and inputting data that would then be available online, as well as begin offering services online that aren’t currently available in the county.

It will also make it easier to share information between offices, he noted.

Commissioners’ Chairman Wayne Nothstein said the move is because the county is losing support of the current system, which is Linux based, due to the programmer retiring.

Commissioner Chris Lukasevich asked Armstrong how the service fees will be covered after implementation.

Armstrong said the court administration has an annual allocation to support the offices that use this system.

The two offices are also considering using part of their filing fees to help support the additional expense.

Nothstein said that both row officers have expressing willingness to provide funding when they could, but couldn’t commit a certain amount because revenues and expenses fluctuate.

In other court-related matters, the board approved the adult probation grant-in-aid application to the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole for the improvement of adult probation services through the reimbursement of eligible salaries of professional staff. The total is for $60,640.

Richmond Parsons, chief adult probation officer, said that the grant-in-aid allocations were created in 1968 to help adult probation offices, but the funding structure hasn’t been updated in years.

“Carbon County has changed a lot since 1968,” he said, adding that he is hoping that a current review of the funding structure will benefit Carbon in the future.