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County says volunteer-fire alert system is running but needs coding fixes from Tyler Technologies
Summary
Officials reported the county's emergency responder alerting system is operating and sending pages to volunteers but flagged recurring problems with form entry and code mapping that require vendor (Tyler Technologies) fixes.
County officials told the commissioners court that the county’s volunteer fire alerting and responder-management system is in use but has persistent coding and integration issues that require vendor support.
The county paid an initial sign-up fee in 2022 for the system and has since worked with Tyler Technologies (Tyler Tech) to integrate dispatch data. Judge (name not given) and other officials said dispatch can send text or email messages to volunteer responders with incident location and type, but dispatch staff have struggled with data entry screens that block progression when specific fields are not filled; in some instances the message does not reach responders.
The judge said he and county staff have logged tickets with Tyler Tech and that county IT has engaged Tyler Tech’s technical support. “We’ve been paying for this for a long time. It needs to be working,” the judge told the court. County staff described examples in which departments recreated codes (for Cayuga VFD) and where multiple backup codes were not all functioning together; the county said Tyler Tech must “tweak” the code mapping so multiple department codes operate as intended.
Emergency-management and sheriff’s staff said the problem appears to be a coding/configuration issue on the vendor side, not a local hardware problem. County IT staff recommended direct technical calls between the county’s IT personnel and Tyler Tech rather than relying on nontechnical dispatch staff to relay problems.
Officials said the system did function during a recent live test in which responders received paging notifications on their phones, and that additional data fields and mapping adjustments remain to be completed. The court was told tickets are open and that the county will continue to press Tyler Tech for corrections.
No formal procurement or contract amendment was approved at the meeting; commissioners asked staff to continue troubleshooting and to coordinate IT-to-vendor calls to resolve the outstanding issues.
