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 December 2025
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Our Scrum Team profiles this month include Team 5-Data Warriors and Team 6- Decisions. Below we feature our professionals from the Political Reform Division (PRD), Secretary of State (SOS) Information Technology Division (ITD), and our Prime Vendor, CGI, highlighting their contributions to the CAL-ACCESS Replacement System (CARS) Project.
CARS Scrum Team 5 – Data Warriors
The Data Warriors focus on the challenges of bringing data out of the existing CAL-ACCESS database and converting that data for use in CARS. This started with a thorough assessment of existing data structures, formats, and dependencies, from which the team developed a detailed migration and conversion strategy.
Team 5 is responsible for transforming our legacy CAL-ACCESS data into formats for the new CARS cloud-based application. This work includes data cleansing, normalization, and enrichment to improve quality and usability.
Using automated tools and scripts, the team converts large volumes of data. This work also focuses on maintaining integrity and compliance with our legal and regulatory requirements. Post-migration verification and optimization help ensure CARS data is accessible, secure, and performing efficiently within the application.
Team 5 Members
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Sabrina Nelson, Scrum Master, facilitates agile ceremonies and champions communication between stakeholders and development teams. Her focus is on building alignment, empowering teams, and driving continuous improvement across CARS. Sabrina points out that Team 5’s success is driven by the dedication of its developers—Keith, Avinash, Nhut, Gary, Karthik, Sean, and Casey—whose hard work powers the team’s progress. |
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Mark Achziger, Subject Matter Expert (SME), is a Research Data Analyst II for the agency, and is responsible for creating internal and external reporting and streamlining processes. He previously worked at the California Department of Healthcare Services, helping counties define service rates for treatment of substance abuse disorders for a new treatment program. As an avid cyclist, he has mapped out multiple backroad biking routes in his area. |
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Christopher Hatridge, SME, is currently a Business Analyst (BA) and joined SOS and PRD as a student assistant more than four years ago. He has been a member of the Lobbying Unit for four years and recently took a new role in the Data Support Unit. |
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Sajal Pradhan, Principal Data Architect for CARS, specializes in enterprise solution architecture, the data lifecycle, artificial intelligence, and web accessibility. Sajal leads teams in developing innovative solutions and ensuring seamless data transitions. Passionate about artificial intelligence and inclusive design, he drives business transformation while making solutions effective, robust, and accessible. |
Data conversion is complete for elections, election cycles, races, ballot measures, and reference data. Conversion on campaign forms for registration and disclosure includes data for candidate intention, slate mailer organizations (SMO), and SMO campaign statements (forms 400, 401, and 501).
Lobbying data converted for registrations includes lobbyist employer registration, lobbyist certification, amendments, notices of termination and withdrawal (forms 603, 604, 605, 606, and 607). Lobbying disclosure data converted includes lobbyist reports and reports for lobbyist employers/coalitions (forms 615, 630, 634C, 635, and 640).
Scrum Team 5 is making steady progress to bring campaign and lobbying information from our legacy systems into CARS.
CARS Scrum Team 6 – Decisions
Scrum Team 6 is adding Decisions software to the CARS solution. Decisions is a tool that automates workflows and applies business rules with minimal coding required. One of the main advantages of using this tool is that it will automatically check user data for errors, catching mistakes before submission.
Decisions' low-code technology enables system administrators to easily update rules and processes for new business requirements and legislation changes. The software will also handle large-scale tasks such as processing annual fee assessments.
Team 6 Members
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Kate Pesci, Decisions Product Owner, has served as the PRD Data Support Manager for the past five years. Before joining SOS, she owned a small business and previously worked as a Business Intelligence Technical Specialist on International Business Machines midrange servers. Kate is passionate about driving innovation and creating operational efficiencies across the division, leveraging her diverse background in data management, technical systems, and business operations to deliver impactful solutions. |
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Raghav Chivukula, Solution Architect in the SOS ITD, is the Decisions Lead and participates with the Automated Testing team for the CARS Project. He joined SOS in 2021. He is a graduate of Osmania University, India and has a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA.. |
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Joseph Chang, SME, is the Principal Solutions Architect for CARS. Joseph joined SOS after working at Kratos Defense Security Solutions on NeuralStar, their enterprise network management software used by Homeland Security agencies, defense companies, and other companies such as Microsoft. Outside of work, Joseph enjoys unique hobbies such as collecting air guitars. |
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Erik Medrano is the Decisions platform SME for CARS, specializing in creating configurable business logic that validates campaign and lobbying workflows. With a decade of prior experience at Decisions in both technical and leadership roles, he now works closely with our BAs and developers to translate complex requirements into visual business rules. |
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Malavika Bonala, the Senior Decisions Developer for CARS, specializes in architecting and crafting business logic to enhance the decision framework. She orchestrates operations across workflows and data, collaborating closely with both functional and technical teams to deliver reliable, insight-driven rule frameworks that improve clarity, consistency, and accountability across the platform. |
*Team 6 also includes Sajal Pradhan and Chris Hatridge, featured above in Team 5.
Team 6 Accomplishments:
The goal of integrating the Decisions software in the CARS project is to make the application’s business logic configurable through a visual platform. Therefore, the Decisions team supports all development teams across the project. Erik and Malavika currently maintain nearly 300 Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) composed of more than 700 business rules, most of which are used in campaign and lobbying workflows to validate form data. Looking ahead to Program Increment (PI) 3, the team will expand this work to include fee and fine assessment and calculation.
The work of Team 6 brings to the CARS platform sophisticated business rule processing, intelligence, and automation.
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CARS Monthly External Stakeholder Meetings. This meeting series occurs on the second Wednesday of each month to keep stakeholders informed and answer questions about the CARS Project. The next meeting is on 12/10/2025, from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. and includes a functionality preview.
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Third-Party Software Vendors. We are currently in Phase 1 of our three phases for certifying all vendors before CARS go-live. The phases are:
Phase 1: October 6 – December 19, 2025: Pre-certification setup in the CARS certification environment
Phase 2: February 23 – June 24, 2026: Integration testing and User Acceptance Testing (UAT) using formal test cases
Phase 3: August 10 – October 16, 2026: Administrative certification prior to CARS go-live in November 2026
Our Prime Vendor team has now finished development of APIs for 31 forms, with 23 of them ready for System Test.
We continue to meet with our third-party software vendors twice monthly, on the second and fourth Tuesday from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. Next meeting is 12/23/2025.
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Program Increment (PI) Schedule. The CARS schedule consists of four Program Increments. PI 1 is on track to be closed out by 12/17/25. Features released in PI 1 include registration and activity reporting for both campaign and lobbying filers.
Our work on PI 2 has already begun. Its initial features are due for deployment to our Staging Environment by 1/12/26. PI 2 includes end-to-end workstreams for all financial transactions, as well as many aspects of system administration, user account maintenance, and filer, public, and PRD portals.
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As we prepare for the new CAL-ACCESS system to be available for public use at the end of 2026, please ensure that your email address on file is current. A valid and up-to-date email address will be required to properly register and access the new system.
Annual fee letters from SOS were sent out in November:
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If we have your email address on file, you received this letter by email.
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If we do not have your email address, we sent the letter by regular mail.
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How will CARS reduce errors in campaign and lobbying filings?
CARS reduces errors through a number of key improvements over the legacy CAL-ACCESS system:
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Structured Data Model. Unlike CAL-ACCESS’s form-driven approach, CARS uses a data-centric design, enabling automated validation of entries before submission.
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Real-Time Error Checking. CARS validates campaign finance and lobbying filings as users enter data, immediately catching missing fields, incorrect formats, and logical inconsistencies.
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Business Rule Enforcement. Built-in compliance checks ensure filings meet legal and regulatory requirements before acceptance.
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Guided Workflows. Filers receive prompts and warnings during submission, reducing confusion and incomplete filings.
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Accessibility Features. Modern design minimizes user mistakes caused by poor navigation in the current CAL-ACCESS.
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Electronic Signatures & Online Payments. Removes reliance on paper filings and manual data entry, which are major sources of errors in CAL-ACCESS.
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Integration with APIs. Improves direct third-party software vendor submission of data and reduces transcription mistakes.
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User Acceptance Testing. Continuous feedback from end-users’ participation in testing helps ensure the system addresses common error points.
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What would you like to see included in the next CARS Stakeholder Bulletin issue? Email PRDCARS@SOS.CA.GOV to provide your ideas and feedback.
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The CARS Project Monthly External Stakeholder Meeting Series (MS Teams), PowerPoint Presentations, Q&As, FAQs and additional information may be found on the CARS Homepage.
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