>The screenshots are so bad, not even the juniors I work with would consider deploying this. It's mind boggling.

Not defending the UI too much but I'm imagining this is something built and deployed on government contract in the late 90s or early 2000s (when it was considered high technology that they could do this from a web page in the first place?), occasionally migrated to whatever marginally newer system is required by law while consuming the minimal amount of funding.

It's a damn shame but a lot of govt. stuff ends up in this exact boat because nobody wants to pay to improve something that "already works."

I think you're a bit off with the time frame. The system sends push notifications to citizens in a specific area, or am I mistaken? Are these texts?

The Wireless Emergency Alerts system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Emergency_Alerts) dates back to 2006, but it is quite plausible that the backend this interface controls predates that if it was originally a desktop interface for the Emergency Broadcast/Emergency Alert System.

I wonder how much money they spent for this...