A: All organizations will have access to Production Simulation. Full access will be granted to all current Child Welfare Services/ Case Management System (CWS/CMS) users or people who join the organization in roles that would be equivalent to CWS/CMS users. Production Simulation access will be granted in Phases, with roughly 2,800 users participating in Phase 1 and the remaining county and organization users accessing the Production Simulation environment in Phase 2 beginning July 6, 2026.

A: CWS/CMS production data will be loaded into the Production Simulation environment, but updates or changes will not be automatically saved in CWS/CMS. Any changes will be lost each time the Production Simulation environment is refreshed with new data. Please note that data entered into the Production Simulation will not transfer to CWS/CMS. Since the simulation is strictly a practice environment, CWS/CMS remains the sole statewide system of record. Consequently, any data required for official records will still require entry into CWS/CMS.

A: Data entered into the Production Simulation will not transfer to CWS/CMS. Since the simulation is strictly a practice environment, CWS/CMS remains the sole statewide system of record. Consequently, any data required for official records will still require entry into CWS/CMS.

A: Yes, we are continuing to work on plans for training; there will be a Procedure Manual with "Cheat Sheets" that you can utilize as you're training.

A: The Service Desk County Advisory Committee (CAC) now replaces the Go-Live Support Group. To maintain continuity, the February 3rd announcement suggests that counties include their former Go-Live Support members if they choose to participate in the Service Desk CAC.

A: No, Production Simulation is a practice environment so the data will not be saved into the permanent case record.

A: No, the changes to Production Simulation testing will not affect the training schedule and dates that was shared.

A: Yes, we are setting up a Service Desk County Advisory Committee (CAC) to work through the ticketing process and service level expectations. This CAC will include county/project representatives and the focus is operational county and state coordination, incidents and escalations, defect prioritization, business continuity, and knowledge base.

A: Active CWS/CMS users (approx. 25,000) will be able to access CWS-CARES Production Simulation. Additionally, it will incorporate their role-based access controls (RBAC) to ensure their permissions accurately mirror the live production environment.

A: Yes. Production Simulation will take place in lieu of EUST 4. Instead of a six-week testing period during EUST 4, organizations will have five months to test in the Production Simulation environment.