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Secretary of State's Office Plans CARS Project Webinar for Vendors

The state is seeking to replace the "forms-driven" system for tracking lobbying and campaign contributions. The new system will rely primarily on data.

The California Secretary of State’s Office is hosting a webinar for vendors and others interested in learning more about a new, data-driven system replacing the existing forms-driven system for the Cal-ACCESS Replacement System (CARS) Project.

“The CARS Project is restarting with a new team and new solution,” the agency says in its online announcement. The CARS Software Vendor/Service Provider Meeting, which will be held via WebEx, will run from 10 to 11:30 a.m. July 8. More information and access details are available online.

Cal-ACCESS is the California Automated Lobbying and Campaign Contribution and Expenditure Search System, which the Secretary of State’s Office describes as “the public’s window into California’s campaign disclosure and lobbying financial activity, providing financial information supplied by state candidates, donors, lobbyists, lobbyist employers, and others.”

The agenda for the meeting includes:

  • Welcome and CARS Project Team Introductions
  • Salesforce Discussion
  • API Discussion – Architecture, Approach and Next Steps
  • API Regulations Update
  • Q&A / Wrap Up
In its most recent online update of the project, the agency said in March: “The CARS system integrator (SI) has selected a new solution platform for the new Cal-ACCESS. Leveraging the flexibility of the Salesforce platform with system analysis and lessons learned during the past year, the SI has already started design and development activities. … The CARS Project Team continues to target implementation of the new Cal-ACCESS by February 2021. The CARS Project Team is aligning a new schedule to identify the detailed timeline for each specific activity, e.g. Application Programming Interface (API) development and testing, and user acceptance testing of system. Consider this as time ‘sharpening the axe.’ Getting the details right is critical to meeting the target implementation date.” 

 

Dennis Noone is Executive Editor of Industry Insider. He is a career journalist, having worked at small-town newspapers and major metropolitan dailies including USA Today in Washington, D.C.