NATCHEZ — Adams County has hired its first full-time information technology director.

The Adams County Board of Supervisors interviewed three applicants for the position earlier this week, and offered the job to Lance Bishop of Tampa, Fla.

Bishop has accepted the job, and will start at the beginning of the new fiscal year, County Administrator Joe Murray said. He will be compensated at a rate of $60,000 annually.

The county currently contracts with IT company Premise for its computer needs, but the supervisors voted earlier this year to create the IT position because the contract with Premise couldn’t keep pace with the county’s day-to-day needs, Murray said.

The county administrator said the choice the board made was not an easy one and that all three candidates were highly qualified, but one of the things that stood out about Bishop was that he currently works for Premise.

“He has worked here in our office, he has installed some of our servers and imaging software in the past,” Murray said. “He has worked here in Adams County on various other projects years ago.

“He can come in here and not have any kind of learning curve; he can hit the ground running.”

Murray said that within 12 hours of being hired Bishop had submitted a budget to him of what he thought the county needed to address its IT needs.

“He really nailed it down to what we need,” Murray said. “He has his ideas of what he wants to do to save us some money.”

Bishop will spend his first several months addressing day-to-day needs and organizing the county’s IT system to be more efficient. He’ll also help transition the county phone system into a digital replacement.

“We have had a lot of problems with our phone system,” Murray said. “This guy has got good experience working with phone systems also, so he is going to be very helpful regarding that.”

Bishop is married and has two children.