CHARLESTON, W.Va. — When the Legislature starts its annual session on Wednesday, it will have a seemingly small change that’s taken workers thousands of hours over the past eight months to accomplish.
After using Word Perfect software for word processing for the past 15 years, the Legislature is changing its computers to Microsoft Word.
The transition isn’t as simple as moving from one program to another, said Aaron Allred, legislative auditor and legislative manager. Not only is there a learning curve, but staff members have had to convert about 38,000 files from one program to the other.
“It’s all the programming behind it that takes the enormous amount of time,” Allred said.
The project, which cost $55,000, started after last year’s session ended. Allred estimates that the IT department’s 10 staffers have spent 4,000 to 8,000 hours on the project.
“Those hours didn’t include House and Senate clerks’ offices and they’ve put in a lot of time, as well,” Allred said. It also doesn’t include the time to train staff members on the new system.
House of Delegates Clerk Steve Harrison said the conversion was a major project…