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	Environmental Protection / 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
04/01/2026 - 04/30/2026	Yellow

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?Uncertain

Project Overall Health	Comments
Yellow	The overall project health is rated as Yellow, indicating that caution is warranted due to existing risks and issues that may require corrective action in the near future. • The System Integrator’s (SI) proposed high-level schedule indicates a go-live date that exceeds the approved baseline of May 3, 2027. The proposed high-level schedule for re-baselining the project end date is yet to be approved by the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) . • There is uncertainty in the project backlog, with an estimated growth of 10–25% in user stories that are continuing to be refined. • The SI has requested an additional five resources not supported by the current contract to handle work streams like Tableau reporting and MuleSoft-based data migration. • Total project costs are likely to incur a variance due to the anticipated schedule extension and additional resource needs, with a possibility of triggering a Special Project Report (SPR). • The project sponsors decided to maintain the SI contract as Time-and-Materials and to discontinue the planned transition to a deliverables-based contract structure. • 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.

Project Overall Health

Comments

Yellow

The overall project health is rated as Yellow, indicating that caution is warranted due to existing risks and issues that may require corrective action in the near future. • The System Integrator’s (SI) proposed high-level schedule indicates a go-live date that exceeds the approved baseline of May 3, 2027. The proposed high-level schedule for re-baselining the project end date is yet to be approved by the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) . • There is uncertainty in the project backlog, with an estimated growth of 10–25% in user stories that are continuing to be refined. • The SI has requested an additional five resources not supported by the current contract to handle work streams like Tableau reporting and MuleSoft-based data migration. • Total project costs are likely to incur a variance due to the anticipated schedule extension and additional resource needs, with a possibility of triggering a Special Project Report (SPR). • The project sponsors decided to maintain the SI contract as Time-and-Materials and to discontinue the planned transition to a deliverables-based contract structure. • 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.

Focus Area/Rating	Comments
Governance Green	This focus area is Green (satisfactory). • The project has established a formal Executive Steering Committee (ESC), to meet regularly to provide clear project information and timely decision-making. • Project roles and responsibilities for all team leads are updated and socialized to ensure clear responsibility and accountability during the implementation phase of the project lifecycle. • 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. • The IPO Manager recommends that the ESC facilitate prioritizing finalizing the decision on the Phase 2 end date, to stabilize the project's schedule. Continuing to proceed with execution without an agreed-upon level of backlog readiness reduces transparency into execution commitments and constrains the effectiveness of schedule forecasting, change management, and governance oversight.
Time Management Red	This focus area changed from Yellow (cautionary) to 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 high-level schedule or socialize a new detailed plan. • The latest version of the proposed high-level schedule has further extended the project end date to October 2027 from the previous estimation of September 24, 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 to arrive at the new detailed schedule, and stabilize schedule management and reporting.
Cost & Contract Management Yellow	This focus area is Yellow (caution). • The project’s status for achieving objectives within the approved budget is officially "Uncertain" due to the anticipated schedule extension and new resource requirements. • The extent of the cost variance due to the schedule extension will determine whether an SPR will be triggered. • The SI has requested to add an additional five resources to support testing, reporting, and data migration, but these resources are 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 increase the likelihood of unplanned cost growth.
Scope Management Green	This focus area is Green (satisfactory). • Phase 2 is currently executing sprints, with Sprint 0.1 recently completed and being tested in UAT, Sprint 0.2 is in development, and an additional Sprint 0.3 is in planning stages. • The project team is currently organizing/adding 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, supporting governance bodies to understand planned refinements and material changes, expectations for sprint outcomes, and supporting effective oversight without impeding delivery velocity.
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. • 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 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. The discovery of unique UI layouts for different roles, rather than a shared, standardized layout, has necessitated unplanned rework and introduced design and maintainability risks. • The sprint 0.1 testing results noted a concerning pass rate of 56%. The IPO Manager notes that a high percentage of UAT defects generally indicate incomplete understanding, insufficient requirements validation, gaps in earlier testing layers and rushed or reworked development. Delaying finalization of the execution schedule while experiencing a high defect rate during UAT significantly increases quality risk. • 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. • Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) actively monitors the risk register and captures technical clarifications during meetings to ensure project activities remain aligned with documented objectives. • During this reporting period, the project logged three new risks. Risk# 84 is related to data migration impact on reporting, Risk#85 is related to the Salesforce platform releases causing errors and, Risk#86 is related to the sub-standard deployment process. Issue# 48 was opened during this reporting period, related to - baseline phase 2 end date not being achievable.
Transition Readiness Green	This focus area is Green (satisfactory). • The project team is successfully executing knowledge transfer sessions, with 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 currently being onboarded). • Following the issuance of a 30-day termination notice to the external OCM contractor, the IPO Manager recommends that the project team coordinate closely with the California Department of General Services (DGS) to formalize the off-ramp process for the OCM contract termination and ensure all final vendor deliverables are secured.
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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