A: The Project reports that Roles Based Access will be ready for testing during Production Simulation, the CWS-CARES Administration team is supporting user setup, and staff lists have been updated to include only active users.
 

A: County Help Desk teams will receive targeted guidance and training to ensure they are ready for Go‑Live. The project is defining clear roles for Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 support, and policies and procedures for local Tier 1 help desks are currently being developed. A new service desk vendor begins at the end of September, and counties will receive information to help them understand the transition and what support will look like during cutover and Go‑Live. The Production Simulation (Prod Sim) team will remain in place to assist throughout this period.

Counties can leverage built‑in CWS-CARES tools and ServiceNow, which will guide users through basic troubleshooting and route issues to live support when needed. Some counties will use local Tier 1 help desks, while others without local support will contact the project help desk directly.

A small SME huddle will be convened to finalize help desk procedures, and counties are invited to provide input through county leadership and CWDA to the Project.
 

A: Counties will need to submit CWS/CMS Help Desk tickets to IBM to request termination of account access. County Admins will not have the ability to terminate that access like before but will be given access to weekly deactivation reports in CWS-CARES to help support this process. Please note that CWS/CMS account access will not automatically be terminated when an CWS-CARES account is terminated, so please ensure to submit a CWS/CMS ticket to IBM for CWS/CMS account access termination.

A: After Go-Live, County Admins are responsible for creating new user accounts and assigning permissions in the Admin Console for any staff who join the department post–Go-Live.

A: Yes, P-CIS access will be permission/role-based and controlled by counties.

A: At this time, academies have been added to the queue for access to CARES 104. The Project is working on granting users from the academies access and should be done soon.

A: The Project has shared information about the Instructor-Led Training (ILT) Course Curriculum that gives an understanding of the content that will be covered in each Train-the-Trainer (TTT)/Instructor-Led Training (ILT) course. Within that document, there is guidance given about the intended audience for those courses and the CWS-CARES permissions that enable the content that would be covered.

A: This is being considered as a new feature — a County Admin would be able to change another County Admin within the county, but not their own permissions.

A: Due to the timeframe in which users needed to be added to CARES 104, some of the lists that included TTT participants may have also included previously identified super users.

A: Most enablement programs will be available for anyone who has access to an environment on August 3, 2026.