February 14, 2025
Communications
All SPOCs and Technical Contacts:
The CWS/CMS Workstation Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) Install Options guide has been updated to version 7.3. The date of this updated guide is February 5, 2025. IBM/Kyndryl have loaded this updated guide to the Co-Existent Counties’ shared folder (CodeDist\COTS_Software\Windows_11) If a Co-Existent County does not see the updated version in their shared folder, then review to confirm that the folder is synced to copy the files from the IBM folder. A manual sync might be needed if the automated process is not active.
In addition, the guide has also been added to the CWDS website at https://cwds.ca.gov/pages/hardware_technical_information. You can navigate to the guide by opening the ‘CWDS website’ à click the drop-down arrow next to the ‘Stakeholder Resources’ header à click on the ‘CWS/CMS User’ link à click on the ‘CWS/CMS Guides’ link listed below the “County Logon” header ( website logon is required to access this section) à click on the ‘Hardware and Technical Information’ link à click on the ‘CWS Workstation COTS Install Options v7.3’ link.
Action Required
Co-Existent Counties should review the CWS/CMS Workstation COTS Install Options guide to build their workstation image to match the settings used for the Dedicated County image.
February 14, 2025
Communications
To: Child Welfare and Probation CARES SPOCs and Child Welfare Implementation Coordinators
CC: County, Tribe, Probation, and State Leadership, and OCM Coordinators
February 14, 2025 UPDATE: We would like to notify everyone that the January 2025 Q&A (PDF) is now posted to the website. CWS-CARES Stakeholder Briefings | Child Welfare Digital Services.
_____________________________________________________________________________
February 4, 2025 UPDATE: Thank you for taking the time to attend the CWS-CARES Stakeholder Briefing #2 held on Wednesday, January 29, 2025. We were thrilled to have over 557 staff participate, representing an impressive 52 of the 58 California counties, tribal communities, as well as 13 Probation offices. Your active participation and engagement were invaluable.
For your convenience, the presentation slides and recording are now available on our website at CWS-CARES Stakeholder Briefings | Child Welfare Digital Services.
We appreciate the comments and thoughtful questions you raised. We captured over 137 questions during the session, and we will be publishing the session’s Questions & Answers document to the website in the next few weeks.
To stay up to date on the latest CWS-CARES project news, visit the CWDS website and subscribe to our project newsletters.
We value your continued partnership and look forward to seeing you at the CWS-CARES Stakeholder Briefing #3 on June 25, 2025.
If you have further questions or require additional information, please do not hesitate to contact CWDS Customer Relations.
_____________________________________________________________________________
January 27, 2025 UPDATE: If you registered for the session, you should have received an email from CalHHS Office of Technology and Solutions Integration with an Outlook calendar invitation attachment containing the Webinar link. Please note that this invitation will not automatically be added as an event on your calendar; you must open the Outlook calendar invitation attached to the previous email and accept it.
Registrations are still being accepted. To register or re-register for the session, please use this hyperlink: Register for January 29th CWS-CARES Stakeholder Briefing Session
We look forward to your participation.
_____________________________________________________________________________
We hope you found our first Stakeholder Briefing Session in June 2024 informative and useful. We’re excited to announce our Second CWS-CARES Stakeholder Briefing Session to unveil new features, foster engagement, and drive user adoption.
Date: Wednesday, January 29, 2025
Time: 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Format: Webinar
The agenda includes:
- Leadership Opening
- A Holistic Design & User Feedback Update
- Demonstrations and Feature Highlights:
- Intake & Investigations (what’s changed since the last session)
- Case Management
- The Foster Care Eligibility Determination (FCED) interface between CWS-CARES & CalSAWS
- An External Systems Update
- Implementation, OCM, & Training Updates
- Technology Updates
- Q&A
You may register for the session using the CWS-CARES Stakeholder Briefing #2 Registration page.
Registration takes less than a minute by entering your name, email, and county or organization. Once registration is complete, a meeting notice with the session information will be automatically sent to the email provided.
You may register for others or forward this email to staff that might be interested in attending the session. We encourage everyone to register by January 22, 2025.
The session will be recorded. For more information, please refer to the CWS-CARES Stakeholder Briefings page on the CWDS website which contains the session dates, past session recordings, and materials.
Action Required
You are invited to register for the CWS-CARES Stakeholder Briefing #2. We encourage registration by January 22, 2025. For additional questions, please email CWDS Customer Relations at: CWS_CustRel@otsi.ca.gov.
February 07, 2025
Communications
All SPOCs:
The CWDS Office and IBM have scheduled a patch update for the System Change Request (SCR) website. The patch window is scheduled for Wednesday, February 12, 2025, beginning at 7:00 PM and concluding at 11:00 PM. The SCR website will be unavailable for approximately one hour within the patch update window.
Action Required
No action needed.
January 27, 2025
Communications
All SPOCs, Technical Contacts and CTW Registered Testers:
To accommodate the CARES Pilot Support activities, the CWDS Executive Leadership Team has decided to postpone the CWS/CMS Release 9.6 by three months, originally scheduled for Saturday, May 17, 2025. We apologize for any inconvenience this postponement may cause.
The new CWS/CMS Release 9.6 Go-Live date is still to be determined. An update will be sent out as soon as the new release date has been finalized.
Action Required
Please look for the CTW related meeting cancellations. No other actions regarding CWS/CMS Release 9.6 are needed at this time. Release activities are on hold until the release Go-Live date has been finalized.
January 16, 2025
Communications
All Core Constituent Survey Participants:
Thank you for participating in our third quarterly Core Constituent Survey and sharing your valuable insight on the CWS-CARES Core Constituent meetings.
For your awareness, we’ve attached a 1-page summary of the survey results, highlighting some of the feedback we received from participants.
You may forward this to members of your organization who completed the Core Constituent Survey or others who might find this information helpful.
We appreciate your contributions and look forward to using your input to continue improving the Core Constituent meetings.
Action Required
Please forward this email to any others who completed the Core Constituent Survey.
January 08, 2025
Communications
The California Department of Technology (CDT) reported a major incident, Virtual Private Network (VPN) users were unable to authenticate connectivity. CDT investigated the issue and has resolved the services. Users are now able to access VPN.
Action Required
If users experience any issues with CWS/CMS or with using VPN, please follow your county process for reporting issues or you may contact the IBM Boulder Help Desk at 1-800-428-8268.
December 24, 2024
Communications
All SPOCs and Technical Contacts:
December 24, 2024 UPDATE:
The issue with the IBM Help Desk Phone System is still being investigated, and it is expected to take a few days to resolve. As a temporary solution, please use the alternate phone number provided below to reach the IBM Help Desk. Alternate Phone Number: 1-855-479-3365
Please note: this alternate phone number will remain in effect until the issue with the original IBM Help Desk Phone System is resolved.
We appreciate your patience.
_________________________________________________________________
An issue has been discovered with the IBM Help Desk Phone System. Callers receive a message that the call cannot be completed as dialed or the call is dropped. This issue is being investigated and additional updates will be sent out as status is received.
Action Required
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 the alternate phone number listed above.
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.
December 16, 2024
Communications
All SPOCs:
The CWDS Office has decided to remove the CWDS Contacts pages from the public-facing website, available to all users. Instead, to view this contact information, a user must first log in with a valid email address recognized by an organizational email domain. A user trying to access this ‘Contacts’ section will be required to enter log-in credentials for the CWDS website if they have not already logged in. This change was implemented today, December 16, 2024.
Action Required
No action required. Users may self-register to ‘Behind County Login’ by signing up with a valid organizational email domain to access the County Contacts, and all other sections of the CWDS website requiring recognized login credentials.
