Actually in the Essex South ROD the examiners have been working for many years with management to improve the computer systems. One of the biggest problems has always been that computer systems have always been designed by people who aren't title examiners. Kind of a dumb thing to do, but there you have it. Fortunately, in Essex South, management is eager for our input, so there's been lots of useful changes to the system, resulting in something that actually works pretty well & is fairly user friendly. Mass Land Records, run out of the Secy State's office, which covers most of the rest of the state, is a different system altogether & when they rolled out a new system there was a huge outcry. Most, if not all, of the comments were negative & deservedly so. Where the old system was somewhat balky online (believe it or not there are different systems for online & in Registry computers); the new system was practically incomprehensible. Once again, a committee of examiners met with the system designers to make some useful changes. The new Mass Land Records is good for some things, not so good for others, so, if you're a local yokel you know to blend both systems when using it.
& then there's BrownTech, a perfectly dreadful system, used in just a few places, that is a complete nightmare to use. It is absolutely not user friendly, or even remotely intuitive, so there's no walking into the Registry & bing, bang, you're perched on a stool, happily running titles.
This is the essence of what I believe the professor missed altogether. Computer systems are really about local requirements & I do not believe that there's any possible way to nationalize them. One other issue that the professor did not mention is just how the information is entered into the system. Even though Cambridge, Lowell & Boston all share the same system from Mass Land Records, they don't input the data the same way, which is why remote title examining will end up not working out very well for those who try it.
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