Some quick thoughts...

On the Technology Side

Technical such a system is not difficult to design and develop.  In essence, it has two parts: the User Interface part which includes the forms ect. that users see and use, then the Back-end Processing part, which runs SQL queries to retrieve relevant data based on search criteria and then present them to a user.  So, they are just data retrievals, much simpler than a system that would involve the entire CRUD (C for create, meaning, data insertion;  R for retrieval, pull data from a database or other data storage; U for update, data update; D for delete, data deletion).  See?  Only R is involved for such as a system.

On the Business Side (and a potential solution)

If a county office, be it a recorder office or other office has a simple transparency policy that states that for each computer or other system it intend to purchase it must publish the following information to the public it would increase the likelihood of getting a good system and at a good price:

* Core System Requirements

* Budget Range

* Expected  Delivery Time Frame

* Bidder Qualification Requirements

Then, publish all bidding information to the public as well

Once deployed, publish users feedback to the public as well

Would it add cost the county? Sure, but it would be worthy, besides, other offices can use this system for policy transparency as well.