May 23, 2024 UPDATE: This is a reminder, if a County wants to request the transfer of CWS/CMS quarantined unsupported/infected files from CDSS to County stewardship and have not yet done so, to please complete the steps listed below. Please submit your transfer request and provide the needed contact information by 5:00 PM on Friday, June 14, 2024.
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April 16, 2024 UPDATE: Upon further discussion with the California Department of Social Services (CDSS), we discovered that the March 15, 2024, communication (see below) included some inaccurate information. The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) will be signed by CDSS before sending it to the County for their signature. As a reminder, the MOU is needed to allow for the transfer of the infected/unsupported documents/files from CDSS to County stewardship.
The updated steps for a County to request the transfer of CWS/CMS quarantined unsupported/infected files from CDSS to County stewardship are:
- County signifies that they want to receive a copy of the unsupported/infected documents/files by sending an email to the CWDS Customer Relations mailbox.
- County provides the Point of Contact within the County to receive the media with the unsupported/infected documents/files, with the following contact information:
- Name
- Role
- Address
- Phone Number
- Email Address
- County provides the signatory to be listed on the MOU, with the following information:
- Name
- Title
- Address
- Phone Number
- Email Address
- CDSS will use the provided information to draft the MOU.
- CDSS will send the MOU (signed by CDSS) to the County.
- County signs the MOU and emails it to the CDSS Contracts and Procurement Services Branch.
- CDSS or its designee(s) will contact the County to make arrangement for the transfer of the requested files.
- CDSS or its designee(s) will copy the requested County files to an external storage medium mutually agreed upon by the Parties.
- CDSS or its designee(s) shall send the external storage medium to County using a secured overnight courier that, at a minimum, requires signature receipt confirmation.
- County will confirm receipt of the media and the files.
- Upon county confirmation of files being received, the State may delete the original quarantined files from the CWDS quarantined area after 90 Days. After the original quarantined files have been deleted, the CDSS will terminate the MOU.
We apologize for any confusion caused by the previous communication.
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March 15, 2024 UPDATE: CDSS acknowledges and appreciates your continued caution regarding the approvals for the deletion of the infected/unsupported documents/files in the Child Welfare Services/Case Management System (CWS/CMS). In response to County requests for an opportunity to remediate the infected/unsupported documents/files removed from CWS/CMS and placed in quarantine, the CDSS has developed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to allow for the transfer of the infected/unsupported documents/files from CDSS to county stewardship.
Steps to request the transfer of CWS/CMS quarantined unsupported/infected files from CDSS to county stewardship:
- County submits the signed CDSS MOU requesting release of the files to the County. The MOU shall be signed by the County Director signature/approval. Please see the attached MOU.
- CDSS or its designee(s) will copy the requested County files to an external storage medium mutually agreed upon by the Parties.
- CDSS or its designee(s) shall send the external storage medium to County using a secured overnight courier that, at a minimum, requires signature receipt confirmation.
- County will confirm receipt of the media and the files.
- Upon county confirmation of files being received, the State may delete the original quarantined files from the CWDS quarantined area after 90 Days.
If you are interested in requesting the transfer of files for your county, please send your signed MOU to CWDS Customer Relations. Once received CWDS or its designee(s) will contact you to make arrangement for the transfer of the files requested.
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February 8, 2024 UPDATE: The California Department of Social Services (CDSS), the CWDS Project and IBM are still working on determining an approach for sharing with counties the documents that have been quarantined. This decision will take a little longer to complete than originally thought. The updated ETA for the decision is now March 15, 2024. An update will be shared out to everybody once the decision has been made.
In the meantime, the CWDS Office is still awaiting notification from the CWS Directors from a majority of the impacted Counties on your preference to delete or to keep quarantined the affected files. If you have not yet shared your preference, please do so by the extended deadline of February 29, 2024.
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December 26, 2023 UPDATE: The California Department of Social Services (CDSS), the CWDS Project and IBM have decided that the safest option is to quarantine the identified infected and unsupported files in CWS/CMS. The files will not be deleted from CWS/CMS, but users will be prevented from opening the affected documents. The affected documents will be saved to a quarantined area of CWS/CMS on Saturday, January 6, 2024. If a CWS/CMS user attempts to open one of the quarantined documents, they will receive the following error message:
Please note that this DRMS 00122 error message is informational only and that the user will be able to continue to work in the CWS/CMS application after receiving the error message.
The CWDS Project and IBM are still looking to receive responses from the CWS Directors indicating their permission to permanently delete these files. Please contact CWDS Customer Relations by January 31, 2024, with your decision whether to have IBM delete the files in a batch file deletion process.
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December 18, 2023 UPDATE: In the attached letter the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) has provided updated guidance to Counties impacted by the CWS/CMS infected and unsupported file cleanup effort.
Please contact CWDS Customer Relations with any questions related to this guidance.
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As part of planning for CWS-CARES V1, the CARES Data Conversion team has been performing incremental conversion from CWS/CMS data and documents into CWS-CARES. After the documents are extracted from CWS/CMS, they are scanned to ensure that no viruses are introduced into the CARES environment. During this process, it was discovered that, out of 73 million documents that are stored in the CWS/CMS database, approximately 2,400 documents are infected with a virus or malware. Of these 2,400 documents, 95% were last updated in 2001 or before.
Further, there are an additional 2,600 files that have an unsupported file extension.
Due to security concerns, these documents and files cannot be moved into the CWS-CARES application.
Please NOTE: These infected documents are stored in binary large object (BLOB) format on the mainframe in the Db2 database. As a result, these documents do not affect CWS/CMS data on the mainframe. However, if the document is opened, the virus can infect the user’s personal computer. Please ensure that you have a current antivirus operating on your workstation.
If you are receiving this communication, it means that your county is impacted by this issue.
For each affected County, we will send a report listing the infected files and unsupported file extension files, with additional details pertaining to that County. The reports will be sent to affected counties after the Kick-off meetings.
Please provide a point of contact including IT Support and Security Officer as appropriate and their information (Name, Email, Role, etc.) for the person that should receive your County’s report no later than 11/8/23. The report will be sent via encrypted email to that person.
Please use this form to provide the point(s) of contact: CWS/CMS Infected Documents/Unsupported File Extension - Contacts
Once Customer Relations receives the point of contact person’s information, they will be invited to the Kick-off meetings scheduled for 11/14/23 and 11/16/23. The intent of those meetings will be to review next steps.
Action Required
Please provide a point of contact and their information (Name, Email, etc.), using the link above, for the person that should receive your County’s report no later than 11/8/23.