A: The plan for system cutover, as voted and approved by the Board of Directors on September 3, 2026, is to switch CWS/CMS to read‑only on Thursday at 5 p.m. This approach minimizes the amount of time counties operate in read‑only mode and helps reduce overall downtime. Because the cutover occurs shortly before Go‑Live, final validation and remediation are limited to one day prior, which reduces the time available for pre‑launch validation and issue resolution.

For full details, see the Important Update: CWS-CARES Go-Live Date Adjusted to December 7, 2026 communication on the CWDS website.
 

A: Counties can expect the September V1.0 Production Simulation release to include a set of upcoming fixes that OTSI is currently compiling and preparing to share. This will give counties a clear understanding of what changes are included and what they should look for during testing.

Once a bug, defect, or story has been fixed, release notes will be updated so counties know when to go back in and retest the functionality. This provides counties with a clear feedback loop and ensures they can validate the new behavior as part of the Production Simulation release.
 

A: The State is still evaluating the availability of the testing environment after Go‑Live, and no determination date has been identified at this time.
 

A: The only cases being removed from Production Simulation are cases falling under Sealed and Sensitive.

A: There is no set projection or required number of cases. The guidance provided was in the All County Letter (ACL) issued when Production Simulation first launched; the Project is not prescribing additional specifics beyond that.

A: Yes, Enablements trainings willl be in available in the CARES 100 environment, also known as Production Simulation.

A: Permissions would only reset with a full data load (such as a future Mock 3 load) — not with routine functionality updates. The team is researching how to preserve current Prod Sim permission sets so they can be combined with CWS/CMS permission sets at go-live, with counties verifying before the combined list is uploaded to production.

A: Users are free to validate data at their own discretion, as there are no formal test cases to execute. For example, users may compare a record in CWS-CMS with the corresponding record in CWS-CARES Production Simulation to validate that the data matches. Based on county requests, resources will be available on the Production Simulation Hub, including EUST scenarios, navigation guides, walkthrough meeting recordings, and source-to-target mappings that detail source and target fields, as well as data transformations. In addition, Enablement Programs will become available to help guide users through the system.

A: Please attend office hours to make this request. Access is based on the permissions/roles provided by county leads; office hours staff can help address requests for additional permissions.

A: Converted CARES-Live data will be available for validation in Production Simulation environment after Phase 2 begins in July 2026.