Thomas Thai1, Sue Vang2 , Millie Yan3
1 California Department of Tax and Fee Administration, 651 Bannon Street, Suite 100, Sacramento, CA 95811
2 CalRecycle, 1001 I Street, Sacramento, CA 95814
3 Department of Finance, 915 L Street, Sacramento, CA 95814
Members of the Governor’s Innovation Fellows made a framework to help ODI prioritize state employee ideas.
The opportunity
Engaged California collected lots of ideas for how to make state government better. Nearly 1,500 state employees took part. They made almost 2,500 comments and suggested more than 2,600 ideas. These ideas covered major areas of state operations, including:
- Recruitment, hiring, and retention
- Process improvement
- Communication and knowledge sharing
- Public-facing services and resident experience
- Budget and resources
- Technology and digital innovation
The challenge was how to responsibly carry staff’s thoughts into action. There was no shared way to review ideas. This made it hard to compare, prioritize, or connect ideas to future work. The state needed a bridge between employee engagement and discovery, testing, and delivery.
What we learned
We found engagement is most meaningful when people can see a path from input to action. Employee ideas often point to real service and operational needs. But those ideas need discovery, sponsors, and the right implementation conditions to move forward.
We also learned that prioritization should support learning, not simply selection. A useful framework helps leaders ask better questions: Who is affected? What need is being addressed? What could be tested? What would make the idea easier or harder to move forward?
Human-centered design helped keep the focus on people rather than process alone. We started with staff’s voices, looked for patterns, and made decision-making more visible. The team created a tool that can support clearer conversations about public value, feasibility, and next steps.
What we did
The Fellows developed a reusable framework to help ODI and partners review if Engaged California ideas could be future projects. The framework balances:
- Public value
- Readiness
- Implementation effort
- Opportunities to continue work with a future Fellowship cohort
The team tested the framework on a set of high-interest ideas from the engagement results. This showed how leaders could move from a large set of comments and themes to a focused set of opportunities for discovery. The framework does not make final decisions. It is a starting point for identifying which ideas may be ready for the next step. This could be more research, sponsor conversations, prototyping, or planning.
Our approach
We used a human-centered, sprint-based approach to move from broad employee input to a practical decision tool. We began with sensemaking. We reviewed Engaged California results. We found patterns in staff comments that we turned into broad themes. They became opportunity areas. This grounds the work in staff’s needs, frustrations, and ideas for improvement.
The team then reframed the challenge from “Which idea is best?” to “Which ideas are ready for the next stage of learning?” That shift avoided treating prioritization as a one-time ranking exercise. The framework became a way to support discovery and compare tradeoffs. ODI could find places where they could use methods like:
- Service design
- Prototyping
- Research
- Data
- Iterative delivery
The Fellows prototyped the framework and tested it with sample ideas. We got feedback from ODI subject matter experts on how it worked. We then refined the approach before finalizing a minimum viable deliverable.
What’s next
This work gives ODI a foundation for turning staff engagement into a pipeline of initiatives. They can refine and test the framework with more Engaged California ideas. Executives, program leaders, and potential sponsors can use it to discuss possible projects.
We recommend the next phase focus on deeper discovery. One form could be validating ideas with affected staff, departments, and Californians. Another could be short concept briefs for leaders. These would clarify the:
- Problem
- Intended users
- Possible scope
- Risks
- Measures of success
- Possible learnings a pilot or fellowship project
We are putting this approach into action in Cohort 3 of the Governor’s Innovation Fellows program. We are partnering with the Department of General Services to update key documents within their small business and disabled veteran Enterprise office to better serve people doing business with the state. We believe this project will show how to build a transparent and repeatable path from engagement to action. Staff’s voice should not end when they make comments. It should continue shaping discovery, prioritization, testing, and delivery.