State workers can propose ideas to make California’s large government smarter and faster with a new digital democracy tool. The state is taking action on some of the suggestions.

Deliberative democracy is now officially entangled in state bureaucracy.

And that’s good news.

Last year, all 247,000 of California’s state government workers gained access to a new digital democracy tool called Engaged California. Those who used it proposed and developed 2,600 ideas, most of them ways to make California’s large government smarter and faster, according to a new report.

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State workers suggested eliminating rules and forms that caused delays, asked for less paper and better digital tools, called for the state to listen more to regular people and urged the creation of internal think tanks within government. The state is already acting on some recommendations, including improving data sharing between agencies and speeding up the state’s famously slow hiring process.

By jumping into questions of bureaucracy and efficiency, Engaged California constitutes an important advance for a promising but underperforming democratic movement.

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Deliberative democracy refers to processes in which juries or assemblies of everyday people, often chosen with the assistance of a lottery, deliberate on public questions and make policy recommendations to public institutions. One such process, the citizens assembly, has become........

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