* Editor's Note: This is part of an ongoing series that will look at Bartow County's budget by department.

Networking, medical billing, mapping, and business and malt beverage license evaluations are a few things the county's data processing -- or information services -- department handles on a daily basis. With a handful of employees, the office works with all other county offices to maintain a cohesive web of communication.

"It makes the day go by," Director Robin Puryear said. "We also do the website, which, resourcefully, one of the people that works in the office here is really big into the open source-type programs and open source programs are free, so we actually are running that on an open source program so we were able to implement that without a cost. We had looked at a company that had done a lot of other municipalities, and I had talked briefly with them last month about maybe trying to get a better website. And they hadn't given me a definite price but they said they were sure it would be over $20,000."

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