CWDS

CWDS: Questionnaire for External Systems Tracking (QuEST)

April 30, 2026 Communications

All SPOCs and Advanced Planning Document (APD) contacts:

This is a questionnaire that guides APD Coordinators and program staff through providing a thorough use case for External Systems APDs. California Title IV-E Agencies requesting to implement or maintain an external system should be submitting an APD package, including a QuEST with all sections fully completed. The questionnaire is located on our CWDS Website at Advance Planning Document (APD) Information | Child Welfare Digital Services.

What is Impacted:

Child Welfare APD submissions from California Title IV-E Agencies

Who is Impacted:

California Title IV-E Agencies

Why:

This questionnaire will allow for more streamlined APD submissions and therefore more straightforward, informed, quality APD reviews by the Fiscal Monitoring Unit.


Action Required

Please review the questionnaire and disseminate to the appropriate people in your county.

Announcement, CWDS

CWDS Website Latency Issue - RESOLVED

October 30, 2025 Communications

All SPOCs and Technical Contacts:

October 30, 2025 UPDATE: The California Department of Technology (CDT) deployed their fix yesterday. Along with the patch applied yesterday by the CWDS Office, the www.ca.gov website latency issue has been resolved. Users should not experience any issue or delays when accessing the CWDS website (https://cwds.ca.gov).

_____________________________________________________________________________________

The California Department of Technology (CDT) is experiencing an issue with their shared statewide template. This issue is causing a latency issue with the www.ca.gov websites, including the CWDS website, https://cwds.ca.gov. When attempting to access the website, users will experience delays, or find the site unreachable, as the page’s contents are loading.

The CDT will deploy a fix to improve the latency later today. The CWDS Office has already applied a patch to mitigate the issue. Loading delays should be reduced.

We will provide additional updates as we receive them.

Action Required

If users experience any issues with the CWDS website, please follow your county process for reporting issues or you may contact the IBM Boulder Help Desk at 1-800-428-8268.

Update, CDT, CWDS

CWDS Website Latency Issue

October 29, 2025 Communications

All SPOCs and Technical Contacts:

The California Department of Technology (CDT) is experiencing an issue with their shared statewide template. This issue is causing a latency issue with the www.ca.gov websites, including the CWDS website, https://cwds.ca.gov. When attempting to access the website, users will experience delays, or find the site unreachable, as the page’s contents are loading.

The CDT will deploy a fix to improve the latency later today. The CWDS Office has already applied a patch to mitigate the issue. Loading delays should be reduced.

We will provide additional updates as we receive them.

Action Required

If users experience any issues with the CWDS website, please follow your county process for reporting issues or you may contact the IBM Boulder Help Desk at 1-800-428-8268.

CWDS, Bulletin

CWDS Scheduled Website Maintenance - Aug. 4, 2025 | 8 PM - 9 PM

July 23, 2025 Communications
All SPOCs and Technical Contacts:
The CWDS Office will be making some backend updates to the cwds.ca.gov website, causing a short outage for the website. The maintenance window is scheduled for Monday, August 4, 2025, beginning at 8:00 PM and concluding at 9:00 PM. The CWDS website will be unavailable for approximately 15 minutes within the maintenance window.
 
Action Required
No action needed.
Maintenance, CWDS

Scheduled Outage of CWS/CMS and CARES-Live Applications for Sept 6, 2025 | 6 AM - 9 AM

June 24, 2025 Communications
All SPOCs and Technical Contacts:
The California Department of Technology (CDT) will perform an upgrade to the CWS/CMS and CARES-Live production databases during the Preventative Maintenance (PM) window on Saturday, September 6, 2025. The PM window begins at 6:00 AM and ends at 9:00 AM. Both the CWS/CMS production application and the CARES-Live production application will be unavailable to all (direct access or remote access) during this maintenance window.

CWS-CARES RFA will not be impacted by this upgrade.

Action Required

CWS/CMS Users: If users experience any issues with CWS/CMS, please follow your county process for reporting issues or you may contact the IBM Boulder Help Desk at 1-800-428-8268.

CARES-Live Users: If users experience any issues with CARES-Live, please follow your county process for reporting issues. CARES-Live County Administrators may contact the CARES Service Desk through the CWDS ServiceNow Customer Support Management (CSM) Portal. Alternate methods are phoning 1-855-292-3444 or via email at Servicedesk@cwds.ca.gov during normal business hours. You may also email after hours and a Service Desk representative will contact you the next business day.
Maintenance, CWS/CMS, Outage, CARES-Live, CWDS

Major Incident Status - Network outage - SERVICE RESTORED

May 30, 2025 Communications
All SPOCs and Technical Contacts:

May 30, 2025 at 8:05 AM - UPDATE: The California Department of Technology (CDT) has reported that service has been successfully restored. If you are still experiencing any connectivity issues, please contact the IBM Help Desk.
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CDT has received reports that the Network is inaccessible. Verizon has confirmed a major outage due to a fiber cut. There is currently no estimate of when access will be restored. Updates will be sent out as new information is received.
 
Action Required
If users experience any issues with CWS/CMS, CARES-Live or CARES RFA, please follow your county process for reporting issues or you may contact the IBM Boulder Help Desk at 1-800-428-8268.
CWS-CARES RFA, CWS/CMS, CDT, CARES-Live, CWDS

CWDS: Dedicated County State Proxy Scheduled Maintenance | May 2, 2025, 5 PM - May 4, 2025, 7 PM

April 29, 2025 Communications
All Dedicated County SPOCs and Technical Contacts:
The CWDS Infrastructure Team will perform maintenance on the Dedicated County State Proxy. CWDS and Kyndryl will replace expiring certificates on proxy servers and CMS workstations. The maintenance window begins on Friday, May 2, 2025, 5:00 PM, and concludes on Sunday May 4, 2025, at 7:00 PM. Dedicated County users are expected to experience a loss of internet service during the update activities. Concurrent Counties are not affected by this maintenance.

Kyndryl will push out the updated certificate to CWS/CMS computers that are powered on and connected to CMS State network. After the proxy certificate is updated, CWS/CMS computers attempting to connect to external websites requiring SSL connection will receive an error message stating the site is blocked by the CWDS Proxy due to an expired certificate.

This update normally completes within 90 minutes, but could take up to 24 hours. Rebooting the computer may speed up the process, if it did not take effect by 7:00 AM on Saturday, May 3 2025.

CWS/CMS computers that are using VPN, or are not powered on, will not receive the updated certificate.

VPN users will need to bring their CWS/CMS computers in to the office and connect to the CMS State network, reboot their computer, and then test access to external websites. If sites that worked before the update are still being blocked after 90 minutes, please try rebooting the computer before opening an IBM Help Desk ticket.

CWS/CMS computers that are powered off, but connected to the State network, will need to be powered on. As stated above, the update normally completes within 90 minutes, but could take up to 24 hours. Rebooting the computer may speed up the process.

Action Required
CWS/CMS Users: If users experience any issues with CWS/CMS, please follow your county process for reporting issues or you may contact the IBM Boulder Help Desk at 1-800-428-8268.

CARES-Live Users: If users experience any issues with CARES-Live, please follow your county process for reporting issues. CARES-Live County Administrators may contact the CARES Service Desk through the CWDS ServiceNow Customer Support Management (CSM) Portal. Alternate methods are phoning 1-855-292-3444 or via email at Servicedesk@cwds.ca.gov during normal business hours. You may also email after hours and a Service Desk representative will contact you the next business day.
Maintenance, CWDS

CDT Service Desk Bulletin - CGEN Vendor Verizon Scheduled Maintenance, Feb.19, 2025 | 12 AM - 6 AM

February 18, 2025 Communications
All SPOCs and Technical Contacts in Mariposa County:
The California Department of Technology (CDT) has scheduled maintenance on Wednesday, February 19, 2025, beginning at 12:01 AM and concluding at 6:00 AM. Users at the listed site will experience a one-hour interruption in connectivity to CWS/CMS and CARES-Live within the scheduled Verizon maintenance window.

Remote access (e.g., Server Based Computing [SBC]) to the CWS/CMS application will not be impacted by this scheduled maintenance.

Action Required
CWS/CMS Users
If users experience any issues with CWS/CMS, please follow your county process for reporting issues, or you may contact the IBM Boulder Help Desk at 1-800-428-8268.
 
CARES-Live Users
Please follow your county process for reporting issues. CARES-Live County Administrators may contact the CARES Service Desk through the CWDS ServiceNow Customer Support Management (CSM) Portal. Alternate methods are phoning 1-855-292-3444 or via email at Servicedesk@cwds.ca.gov during normal business hours. You may also email after hours, and a Service Desk representative will contact you the next business day.
CWS/CMS, CDT, CARES-Live, CWDS, Bulletin

Regional Chairs User Group Monthly Meeting

December 26, 2024 Customer Relations
Meeting information for Regional Chairs User Group Monthly Meeting

Meeting location: Virtual
Meeting time: 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM (Fourth Wednesday every month)

CR Rep:  Customer Relations
CR Email: CWS_CustRel@otsi.ca.gov
Meeting, Regional, CWDS

Some CWDS Website Areas Moving Behind County Logon Page - Effective Dec. 23, 2024

December 20, 2024 Communications
All SPOCs:
Effective Monday, December 23, 2024, the CWDS Office has decided to relocate the following areas/pages from the public-facing CWDS website and move them to the County Logon area (https://cwds.ca.gov/):
  • County Info | State Recognized County Administrator List
  • County Info | Regional Chair page
  • County Info | 24 x 7 Site List
  • Data Quality Portal | Data Quality Workgroup Leads list
  • Data Quality Portal | CWS/CMS Data Quality Dashboard
  • Probation Users | “Who to Contact” document
  • Probation Users | SPOC Guide
  • County Contacts Page (moved to County Logon area on December 16, 2024)
With this change, users are required to log in using a valid email address that is recognized by the organization's email domain.

Users attempting to access these pages will be prompted to enter their login credentials for the CWDS website if they are not already logged in. This change will take effect on Monday, December 23, 2024.

Action Required
No action is required. Users can sign up with a valid organizational email domain to access the pages listed above, as well as any other sections of the CWDS website that require recognized login credentials.

Please contact the CWDS Customer Relations mailbox if you have any questions regarding this action.
Update, Announcement, CWDS