## Notes from 23 February 2026 [[2026-02-22|← Previous note]] ┃ [[2026-02-24|Next note →]] I recently came across **[[California State Government|Engaged California]]** through a [[Pew Charitable Trusts|Pew]] [write-up](https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2026/01/16/as-budgets-tighten-states-double-down-on-efficiency-and-tech-innovation) on how US states are trying to run government more effectively, and one line jumped out at me: California is soliciting [input from state employees](https://engaged.ca.gov/stateemployees/) on how to operate more efficiently and effectively, using an interactive digital-democracy platform modeled on an effort in Taiwan. That framing matters. t a moment when “[[Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)|efficiency]]” talk is sometimes paired with open distrust of public servants - treating them as the problem - this effort starts from a quieter, different premise: if you want government to work better, you begin by listening to the people who do the work, and you build a channel that turns that listening into usable signals rather than noise. **[Engaged California (Engaged CA)](https://engaged.ca.gov/)** is a state-led public engagement program and online platform meant to bring people into policy conversations that are closer to [[Deliberative Democracy|deliberation]] than to simple surveys or fighting on social media. It was launched as a pilot in early 2025, and the basic design is straightforward: participants opt in, share ideas and experiences, react to others’ contributions, and help surface patterns across a group. The ambition is equally clear: this isn’t a “suggestion box”. It’s meant to generate input that policy teams can use - and then reflect back what was learned in a way that participants (and outsiders) can inspect. The program is explicitly inspired by [[Taiwan Government|Taiwan]]’s digital democracy ecosystem, including the style of engagement associated with **[pol.is](https://pol.is/signin)** - which can be described as a tool for mapping where views cluster and where common ground may exist, without rewarding the loudest voices. This inspiration signals a specific philosophy of participation: structure the conversation so disagreement becomes legible, overlap becomes visible, and policymakers can see not just what people said, but how different ideas relate to each other across a diverse group. The first major test was a **pilot focused on [wildfire recovery](https://engaged.ca.gov/lafires-recovery/) in Los Angeles** after the fires in early 2025. Not an an easy topic: disaster recovery is urgent, emotionally charged, and full of trade-offs, yet it’s also a setting where lived experience carries real operational knowledge. The pilot created a time-bound space for affected residents to share priorities and propose concrete needs and solutions, while the state worked on translating that input into an actionable format. What impressed me most is what came after the engagement itself: the results are published as an **[action-oriented report](https://engaged.ca.gov/lafires-recovery/action-plan/)**, structured so you can actually follow the logic from public input to next steps. It reads like a plan. It’s analytical, easy to navigate, and designed for scrutiny: responses are clustered and themes are presented in an ordered way that reflects where participants converged most strongly. The raw data is downloadable. The synthesis is readable. And the overall effect is that public input doesn’t vanish into a black box but becomes something you can trace, revisit, and argue with. [Early assessments](https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2025/11/engaged-california-la-wildfires-lessons) (including from [[Carnegie Endowment for International Peace|Carnegie]]) underline that this is a real governance tool, not just a nice interface: the pilot showed that state-led digital engagement can be responsive and policy-relevant, while raising the right next questions about representativeness, deliberative depth for complex decisions and clear accountability loops as the program scales. Stepping back, the larger point is simple. Engaged CA is a reform experiment grounded in a different starting assumption: government improves when it learns, and it learns faster when it has serious ways to listen... both to residents living through a problem and to the public servants who see where systems break in practice. That’s why it feels so refreshing: it treats public input as something to be organized, interpreted, and acted upon with care - rather than something to be dismissed, weaponized, or used as theater.