California Environmental Reporting System Next Generation (CERS NextGen) - IT Project Tracking - California Department of Technology - California Department of Technology

Independent Project Oversight Report (IPOR) Rating

Green
- Satisfactory, no corrective action necessary.
Yellow
- Caution, risks/issues exist. There may be a need for corrective action in the near future.
Red
- Escalated for immediate corrective action. There is a significant risk to the health of the project.
Blue
- Not enough data is available to make a determination about the project health.
No Report Available - Indicates that a Report is not available for publishing for the reporting period.

0555-018 California Environmental Reporting System Next Generation (CERS NextGen)

The California Environmental Protection Agency, California Environmental Reporting System (CERS) NextGen, will implement a new solution or move the current version of CERS to a supported platform and introduce enhancements to re‐align CERS with current business processes and to meet current and future Unified Program needs.

Project Details

Agency / State Entity	Legislative, Judicial, and Executive / Secretary for Environmental Protection
Total Cost	$39,568,985
Last Approved Start Date	02/17/2026
Last Approved Finish Date	05/03/2027
Criticality Rating	Medium

IPOR Reporting Period	Overall IPOR Rating
05/01/2026 - 05/31/2026	Red

Independent Project Oversight Dashboard

Key Questions

Is the project on track to satisfy the customer's business objectives?Yes

Is the project on track to achieve the objectives in the approved timeframe?No

Is the project on track to achieve the objectives within the approved budget?No

Project Overall Health	Comments
Red	The overall project health rating has changed to Red (Escalated) due to existing risks and issues that require corrective action in the immediate future. • The System Integrator’s (SI) proposed high-level schedule reflects a go-live date that extends beyond the approved baseline of May 3, 2027, and includes a request for five additional resources. • The project is no longer on track to achieve its objectives within the approved budget and timelines, and will trigger a Special Project Report (SPR). • As approvals are delayed, pending decisions by the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA), the IPO Manager recommends that the Project Management Office (PMO) establish decision timelines aligned with project needs to mitigate further risks to schedule and cost.

Project Overall Health

Comments

Red

The overall project health rating has changed to Red (Escalated) due to existing risks and issues that require corrective action in the immediate future. • The System Integrator’s (SI) proposed high-level schedule reflects a go-live date that extends beyond the approved baseline of May 3, 2027, and includes a request for five additional resources. • The project is no longer on track to achieve its objectives within the approved budget and timelines, and will trigger a Special Project Report (SPR). • As approvals are delayed, pending decisions by the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA), the IPO Manager recommends that the Project Management Office (PMO) establish decision timelines aligned with project needs to mitigate further risks to schedule and cost.

Focus Area/Rating	Comments
Governance Green	This focus area is Green (satisfactory). • The project has an established formal Executive Steering Committee (ESC), which meets regularly to provide clear project information and timely decision-making. • Established governance processes are effectively surfacing critical risks, such as schedule and cost uncertainties and resource gaps, to the Steering Committee to facilitate informed funding and scoping decisions. • Continuing to proceed with the execution sprints without an agreed-upon schedule reduces transparency into execution commitments and constrains the effectiveness of governance oversight and change management. • The IPO Manager recommends that the CalEPA leadership prioritize finalizing the schedule and related funding decisions as early as possible to mitigate any risks to project stability.
Time Management Red	This focus area remained Red (escalated) in this reporting period. • The project is no longer on track to achieve its objectives within the approved baseline timeframe and has yet to finalize the new schedule. • The latest version of the proposed high-level schedule has extended the project end date to November 2027. • Proceeding with development activities without an approved schedule baseline reduces the project’s ability to effectively manage schedule performance, evaluate the impact of change, and maintain clear accountability for delivery commitments. • The IPO Manager recommends that the ESC prioritize approving the proposed project end date to help the project teams arrive at the new detailed schedule and stabilize schedule management and reporting. The IPO Manager also recommends the project to ensure backlog development captures enough detail to validate the schedule with confidence, while avoiding premature decisions that could limit adaptability as the team progresses into sprint-level planning.
Cost & Contract Management Red	This focus area changed to Red (Escalated) during this reporting period. • The project is no longer on track to achieve its objectives within the approved budget due to the cost implications of the anticipated schedule extension and new resource requirements. • The extent of the cost variance due to the schedule extension is yet to be determined. • The SI request to add an additional five resources to support the project scope is not currently supported by the existing contract. If approved, this will require an amendment to the contract. • The IPO Manager recommends that the project prioritize finalizing and obtaining the approval of an implementation-level schedule baseline. The major milestones and sequencing serve as reference points for monitoring cost performance, and continued delays will increase unplanned cost growth.
Scope Management Green	This focus area is Green (satisfactory). • The project had a successful demo of Sprint 0.2 user stories and has triaged and is addressing the bugs from the UAT testing. Phase 2 is currently executing Sprint 0.3. • The project continued to work on organizing/add/validate user stories into defined deliverables to ensure that the final system solution meets all regulatory and program-specific expectations. • The IPO Manager cautions that while ongoing backlog development is expected in Agile project environments, proceeding into implementation without an agreed-upon level of backlog readiness reduces transparency into execution commitments and increases the risk of unplanned scope growth during development. • The IPO Manager recommends ensuring transparent reporting, enabling governance bodies to understand planned refinements and material changes, expectations for sprint outcomes, and supporting effective oversight without impeding delivery velocity. • The IPO Manager notes that going too far into detailed requirements at this stage creates concerns, and it might be worth confirming with the team that current discussions are not intended to finalize or lock requirements at the story level and that there is still room to iterate and refine during execution.
Resources Yellow	This focus area is Yellow (caution). • The SI contractor has identified a critical need for five additional resources to manage specialized workstreams like Tableau reporting and automated data migration, which were not achieved in the previous phase. • The project’s current resource status is "Uncertain" because the existing contract does not permit the addition of these consulting resources until a formal amendment is executed, and the required decisions continue to be delayed. • The project continues to rely on the Project Manager (PM) to fulfill both responsibilities of the state PM role and the Business Analyst (BA) role in execution, increasing the risk of downstream impacts to delivery and governance with increased likelihood of late clarification, rework, or solution misalignment. • Resource constraints can force teams to multitask excessively, rush deliverables, skip peer reviews, testing, or documentation, resulting in an impact on quality with increased defects and rework becoming more likely. • The IPO Manager suggests that CalEPA leadership conduct a formal assessment of internal subject matter experts (SME) bandwidth before approving the SI contract amendment to ensure the state can maintain proper resources as development velocity increases, and if the department can effectively support the additional SI resources.
Quality Yellow	This focus area is Yellow (caution). • The project is continuing execution with significant non-functional quality and maintainability concerns. Several technical and process-related issues have emerged during the early implementation of Phase 2. • Lack of coordination of the testing schedule, along with limited awareness among program resources, risks the effectiveness of user acceptance testing (UAT), and introduces timeline risk, as defects may be identified later than planned. • The IPO Manager suggests that the project team implement routine environmental health checks and strengthen monitoring processes to detect external platform-driven changes before they impact scheduled UAT activities. • The IPO Manager recommends that the project establish clear checkpoints for data validation and business sign-off to ensure Salesforce work is not marked complete until it has been successfully validated against migrated data.
Risk And Issues Green	This focus area is Green (satisfactory). • The project utilizes a formal Risk Register and Issue Log to ensure that all identified threats and obstacles are proactively tracked and updated throughout the project lifecycle. • Project team members are encouraged to identify risks and issues at all levels, ensuring that process-driven concerns are escalated to the appropriate owners for mitigation. • No new risks or issues were logged during this reporting period.
Transition Readiness Green	This focus area is Green (satisfactory). • The project team is successfully executing knowledge transfer sessions, with Independent Verification & Validation (IV&V) and oversight partners actively participating to document technical clarifications and monitor readiness risks. • Organizational Change Management (OCM) efforts were recently highlighted by the delivery of successful product demonstrations at the 2026 Certified Unified Program Agencies (CUPA) Conference, reaching hundreds of key stakeholders in the Unified Program. • CalEPA has strategically decided to assume responsibility for all OCM activities internally using available Unified Program resources (staff continuing to be onboarded). • Moving forward, the project plans to proactively focus on the iterative development of training materials and the evaluation of post-deployment operational procedures, ensuring that the department remains well-prepared for the eventual system cutover, even as the team works to stabilize the long-term project schedule.
Conditions For Approval Green	• There are no conditions for approval.
Corrective Action Green	•There are no corrective action items.

Project Approval Documents

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