Plain Language: Improving Communications from the Federal Government to the Public


Powered by Google

 
Home
PL Law
PL Guidelines
Examples
Examples DB
Tips & Tools
Popular Topics
Resources
PL Websites
PL Legacy

Recent News

External links are shown with a"external link icon".

President Obama's hiring reforms draw applause at personnel agency

May 12, 2010
Joe Davidson
The Washington Post

To get an idea of how bad the federal hiring process is, consider that Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry drew a rousing ovation Tuesday with these simple announcements:

"We are switching to résumés."

And: "The president is eliminating knowledge, skills and abilities essays as an initial recruitment requirement of the federal government."

This might seem like ho-hum stuff to the average person, but to those who packed the OPM auditorium for Berry's announcements, the changes represent a significant attempt to fix a system that takes too long and serves no one well.

President Obama wants the government to cut its hiring time -- from when a vacancy is announced until a person is hired -- to 80 days. Some agencies now take as long as 200 days. The president has also ordered federal agencies "to overhaul the way they recruit and hire," saying that "the complexity and inefficiency of today's federal hiring process deters many highly qualified individuals from seeking and obtaining jobs in the federal government."

In a presidential memorandum signed Tuesday, Obama instructed agency heads to take a series of actions by Nov. 1. They include getting rid of essay-style questions for people first submitting applications for federal jobs. Instead of writing essays -- in which candidates describe their knowledge, skills and abilities -- and filling out long, hard-to-understand forms, applicants will be allowed to submit cover letters and résumés or complete "simple, plain language applications."

It says something about the state of government communications when the president has to order officials to use plain language.

From: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/11/AR2010051104426.htmlexternal link icon
Note: Article may no longer be available, or you may have to register or pay to read it.


Say yes to simplicity

May 06, 2010
Greg Sellnow
Postbulletin.com, Rochester, Minnesota

You might have missed it amid all of the fireworks over health care reform, but the U.S. House passed a bill a few weeks ago that could eventually have just as much impact on our daily lives as the controversial health legislation, and it'll cost a whole lot less.

The bill, which is awaiting action in the Senate, would require that all federal documents be written in "plain language" that the average person can understand.

The purpose of the proposed "Plain Writing Act of 2010," according to the bipartisan group of lawmakers who drafted it, is to "improve the effectiveness and accountability of federal agencies to the public by promoting clear government communication that the public can understand and use."

I'm all for that. If you did your own taxes last month, you know how full of bureaucratic gobbledygook most federal forms are, and the problem extends way beyond the IRS.

Check out the language of any proposed law in Congress, the state Legislature or even the city council, and chances are pretty good you'll need an interpreter to explain what it really means.

The gobbledygook problem is pervasive, and I hope this new law will help get politicians and bureaucrats to start writing things in a language most of us can understand.

But the problem with the Plain Writing Act is that its short on specifics. It doesn't define "plain language." It doesn't make clear how we'll know if the law's been violated or what will happen to the perpetrator. (Will there be a plain-language police or a minimum-security prison for federal employees who use lots of eight-syllable words and overuse "whereas?")

Still, as someone who's been deciphering government gobbledygook for decades, I have high hopes for this legislation, and I want it to succeed. So I have some suggestions on how to make the bill more specific and give it some teeth:

• Employ a group of retired high school English teachers to help administer and enforce the bill. English teachers never really retire. To keep their minds sharp, these proud guardians of the language they love send gotcha notes to newspaper editors and columnists whenever we attempt to desecrate it with dangling participles and run-on sentences.

• Outlaw all acronyms that your average eighth-grader would not immediately recognize.

OK: USA, FBI, NFL.

Not OK: FISA, Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac. (These are not hip-hop artists; they're federal programs). This is a problem that's just as pervasive in private business as it is in government. Some folks think they sound smarter if they spit out acronyms to people from other companies or even other departments in their own building. Instead, they end up sounding like they grew up in a country that uses a different alphabet than we do.

• Prohibit politicians from renaming laws. I feel sorry for middle and high school government teachers who have to explain to their classes that the new health care reform act is not "Obamacare," that inheritance taxes are not "death taxes" and that while GOP is an acceptable nickname for the Republican Party, the Party of No is not.

• Make reading the U.S. Constitution mandatory by grade 10. How many times have you heard a political type say "we're drifting away from the Constitution." Or "George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are rolling in their graves over what's happened to the Constitution." Most of these people couldn't recite the first five words of the preamble or tell you the difference between Article 1 and the First Amendment.

• Violators of the plain language law would be sentenced to read a predetermined book or books and then pass a test on the content of that publication. Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style" might be the required reading for first-time offenders. "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" might be mandatory reader for a second offense and so on. It's always better to teach than to punish.

This is just a start. But I have high hopes for the "Plain Writing Act of 2010, and I hope similar laws are passed at the state and local levels." Maybe Americans would be less skeptical of Congress and the Legislature if they could make heads or tails out of what they're doing.

From: www.postbulletin.com/newsmanager/templates/localnews_story.asp?z=2&a=451140external link icon
Note: Article may no longer be available, or you may have to register or pay to read it.


House passes Braley Plain Language Act

March 17, 2010
Office of Rep. Bruce Braley
Press Release

As part of Sunshine Week, the House today passed Rep. Bruce Braley’s (D-Iowa) Plain Language Act (HR 946), which will require the federal government to write documents, such as tax returns, federal college aid applications, and Veterans Administration forms in simple, easy-to-understand language. The bill passed the House by a widely bipartisan margin of 386-33. Sunshine Week is a national initiative to open a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information.

“There is no reason why the federal government can’t write these forms and other public documents in a way we can all understand,” Braley said. “Writing government documents in plain language will increase government accountability and will save Americans time and money. Plain, straightforward language makes it easy for taxpayers to understand what the federal government is doing and what services it is offering. "The Plain Language Act requires a simple change to business-as-usual that’ll make a big difference for anyone who’s ever filled out a tax return or received a government document. This bill shows what bipartisanship can accomplish when we put aside our differences and work together for the common good.”

The Plain Language Act requires the federal government to write all new publications, forms, and publicly distributed documents in a “clear, concise, well-organized” manner that follows the best practices of plain language writing.

Braley introduced the bill in February 2009. A companion bill introduced
by Senators Daniel Akaka (D-HI) and George Voinovich (R-OH) was passed by a Senate committee in December.

Examples of Plain Language in Use: Before and After

Here are three before-and-after examples of how plain language was applied to federal documents to make them easier to understand. For more examples, see http://www.plainlanguage.gov .

Example #1: Medicare Fraud Letter

http://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before_after/medicarefraudltr.cfm

Example #2: FDA drug warning label

http://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before_after/overctrdrug.pdf

Example #3: IRS form

Before: http://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before_after/CP2000_before.pdf

After: http://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before_after/CP2000_after.pdf

From: www.braley.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=639&Itemid=90


Making the case

August 06, 2009
Alyssa Rosenberg
Government Executive

When Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry announced in May that he would pursue pay reform during his tenure, he also outlined an important and somewhat unusual component of that effort. To make substantial changes to federal pay, and again attempt to close the pay gap between comparable jobs in the public and private sectors, Berry said he will have to convince the general public that it has a stake in such reforms.

He isn't alone in believing that management reformers must build public awareness of and support for their initiatives if they're going to achieve their goals in government performance. But the Obama administration's management officials face a daunting challenge educating the public about what government does, and making the case that agencies need resources and attention to improve. ...

It's not just that some inaccurate perceptions about federal pay exist. The problem is even more basic, said Max Stier, president of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, pointing out that many Americans simply don't understand the full scope of what the federal government does. As the debate over health care reform has ramped up, there have been a steady trickle of stories about lawmakers whose constituents have asked them to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," as one town hall attendee last week told Rep. Bob Inglis, R-S.C. Medicare and its counterpart Medicaid are both government-funded programs administered through the Health and Human Services Department.

Stier said even when citizens do understand what federal agencies do, the language the government uses to describe management challenges, or even basic human resources issues, is often incomprehensible.

"The government even talks about vacancy announcements rather than job opportunities," Stier said. "There's a whole separate process that's grown up that's inside government-speak that does not translate to the public."

Those are formidable obstacles Berry -- and the administration as a whole -- will face if they are to educate the public about how government works and how it could work better. Berry has been appearing frequently at Washington events and at conferences across the country to make the case for a new dialogue about civil service to people who already are interested in management reform. And an October conference on pay and management reform sponsored by Harvard University and scheduled to be held in the Washington area, will attract listeners from outside the Beltway.

Stier agreed that it's important to rally the troops, the stakeholder groups that talk to the media and release reports, universities that communicate with students who are looking for jobs, and practitioners eager for a place to apply their skills. He also reiterated Berry's point that the dialogue about federal pay and employee productivity will have to extend far beyond the current boundaries of the debate to have any impact.

"All too often, we talk to ourselves and to a small population of people who are deeply invested in this," Stier said. "At the end of the day, what we have to demonstrate is that this matters to people who don't see this as their primary issue, but rather who have some other agenda -- be it the environment, or children, or defense, and unless you can connect this issue to that network of ideas, you don't succeed. It's performance for the sake of better outcomes in areas people care about."

From: www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0809/080609pb.htmexternal link icon
Note: Article may no longer be available, or you may have to register or pay to read it.


Braley Introduces 'Plain Language in Health Insurance Act' to Lower Costs, Cut Confusion

June 25, 2009

Office of Rep. Bruce Braley

Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa) today introduced the Plain Language in Health Insurance Act, a bill that would require the federal government and private health insurers to write all new healthcare documents in plain, easy-to-understand language.

Under the bill, any publicly distributed document issued by health insurance providers -- including private insurers, Medicare, Medicaid, and any public health insurance provider created by Congress -- would have to be written in plain language. Documents like drug formularies, explanations of benefits, benefit description documents, pamphlets, brochures, or letters to enrollees would be covered under the bill.

''Anyone who’s ever tried to decipher a Medicare prescription drug formulary or shop for health insurance by comparing benefits brochures knows how frustrating interpreting those documents can be,” Braley said. “You shouldn’t have to be a doctor to be able to understand the forms your health insurer sends you. Writing health insurance documents in plain, easy-to-understand language will allow Americans to make smarter choices about their health insurance and will help lower healthcare costs for everyone. Better still, this is a common-sense change that can be implemented at low cost.”

In 2007, Braley introduced similar legislation, the Plain Language Act, to require government agencies to write all forms, documents, and letters in plain language. The US House passed the bill in 2008 but the Senate never took action.

Documents written in plain language have resulted in significant cost savings for organizations implementing the changes. In England, redesigning a customs form using plain language reduced the error rate from 55 percent to 3 percent, saving about $45,000 per year. The redesign cost $3,500.

Documents covered by the Plain Language in Health Insurance Act would have to be written in a “clear, concise, well-organized” manner that follows the best practices of plain language writing.

The Federal Plain Language Guidelines provide an outline for these best practices. According to the guidelines, plain language documents should, for example:

   * Use short, simple words
   * Use “you” and other pronouns to speak directly to readers
   * Use short sentences and paragraphs
   * Avoid legal, foreign, and technical jargon
   * Avoid double negatives

For a full description of the Federal Plain Language Guidelines, see http://www.plainlanguage.gov.

The full text of the Plain Language in Health Insurance Act is attached.

Examples of Plain Language in Use: Before and After

Here are two before-and-after examples of how plain language was applied to federal documents to make them easier to understand. For more examples, see http://www.plainlanguage.gov.

Example #1: Medicare Fraud Letter (click link)

http://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before_after/medicarefraudltr.cfm

Example #2: FDA drug warning label (click link)

http://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before_after/overctrdrug.pdf 

From: www.braley.house.gov/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1


Federal Diary: Big Guns Take Aim at Federal Hiring Problem

June 16, 2009
Joe Davidson
The Washington Post

For a long time there has been a lot of empty noise about the federal hiring process. Now the squeaky wheel is finally getting some high-level grease.

Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, has put agency and department heads on notice about the urgent need to fix federal hiring. He gave them six months to make progress in four areas that Orszag indicated are only the beginning. ... 

In his Thursday directive, Orszag made clear the administration's displeasure with the response that agencies have shown to previous hiring improvement efforts by the Office of Personnel Management to fix a lethargic government practice that has frustrated many applicants, some of whom have simply given up and gone to work elsewhere.

He cited the reaction to the "End-to-End Hiring Roadmap" OPM developed last year. "To date, there has been sporadic effort, at best, applied to making this initial first step in our overall hiring reform a reality," Orszag's memo said.

He and OPM Director John Berry "expect significant progress in four areas of hiring -- timeliness, plain language and streamlined announcements, communication with applicants, and involvement of hiring managers," Orszag wrote.

The memo then went beyond those generalities and got specific.

Orszag told agency leaders that he expects the following tasks to be completed by Dec. 15:

-- Mapping the agency's current hiring process to show what happens from the point when a manager identifies a need to hire someone until the selected person starts working.

-- Producing job announcements in easy-to-understand writing for the agency's top 10 positions, and limiting those announcements to five pages.

-- Notifying applicants about where they stand at four points: when the application is received;when the applicant's qualifications are assessed; when the applicant is referred, or not, to a selecting official; and when the applicant is selected or rejected.

-- Engaging hiring managers in all critical points of the process....

From: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/15/AR2009061502812.htmlexternal link icon
Note: Article may no longer be available, or you may have to register or pay to read it.


Group strives to simplify documents

May 11, 2009
Brenda Kossowan
Red Deer Advocate (Alberta, Canada)

Utility bills, bank statements and government application forms are among the documents people receive every day but may have trouble understanding.

According to the City of Red Deer’s 2006 census, 7,302 of citizens have brain injuries or developmental disabilities, which the Central Alberta Self Advocates say can affect their ability to read and understand words.

Understanding complex words and paragraphs is also an issue for people who are still learning English.

The solution: Translation services offered by a group of developmentally disabled adults who have become experts at making sense of documents.

Group members have offered a translation service for five years or so, says member Bob Doherty, 54, of Lacombe. Until recently, their work was funded as a pilot project through Persons with Developmental Disabilities.

Now members have formed the not-for-profit Plain Language Society.

Its five teams of translators, including four pairs and one team of three, come from service agencies, including the Lacombe Action Group, Michener Services, Catholic Social Services and Central Alberta Residence Society.

From: www.albertalocalnews.com/reddeeradvocate/news/local/Group_strives_to_simplify_documents_44708762.htmlexternal link icon
Note: Article may no longer be available, or you may have to register or pay to read it.


Obama takes aim at credit card companies

April 23, 2009
Amanda Ruggeri
U.S. News & World Report

As part of a larger push on consumer finance issues and under mounting pressure from cash-strapped Americans, President Obama called in executives from 13 credit card companies to deliver a stern message: Crack down on the kinds of practices that the Federal Reserve has called "unfair" and "deceptive."

"People are finding themselves starting off with a low rate, and the next thing that you know, their interest rate has doubled," Obama said after today's meeting. "There have to be strong and reliable protections for consumers."

Credit card companies are coming under growing fire for engaging in practices like "universal default," in which consumers who are late in payments to one creditor find their interest rates raised by another. Critics also cite "two-cycle billing," which occurs when consumers who pay the full balance of their card one month but not the next find interest being charged on both months of debt. Government officials and lawmakers complain that actions taken by credit card companies are not transparent enough or announced with enough advance warning.

The House Financial Services Committee yesterday approved a bill sponsored by Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York to ban the most egregious practices. It would impose limits on fees, prohibit companies from charging customers for paying over the phone or the Internet, and require that companies notify cardholders of increased rates at least 45 days in advance. Some of those changes have already been approved by the Federal Reserve, which changed its regulations in December, but the bill both goes further and, lawmakers say, is necessary to codify the regulations into law.

Obama said today that he supports legislation to crack down on the practices. He also unveiled a number of principles he wants to see reflected in the bill, including that all credit card company forms and statements "have to be written in plain language and be in plain sight—no more fine print" and that each firm offer at least one "plain vanilla, easy-to-understand" card as a basic default for consumers.

From: www.usnews.com/articles/news/obama/2009/04/23/obama-takes-aim-at-credit-card-companies.htmlexternal link icon
Note: Article may no longer be available, or you may have to register or pay to read it.


Clear government writing has a price, U.S. budget analysts say

April 09, 2009
Todd Shields
Bloomberg

The price of clear writing in government documents: $3 million a year.

That’s what it would cost for the U.S. government to train employees in using plain language and prepare progress reports to Congress on the effort, according to a report issued by the Congressional Budget Office and posted on its Web site.

The nonpartisan agency estimated the cost to comply with the Plain Writing Act sponsored by Senator Daniel Akaka. The Hawaii Democrat’s legislation would require federal agencies to practice “writing that the intended audience can readily understand and use because that writing is clear, concise, well- organized, and follows other best practices of plain writing.”

The bill was approved by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on a voice vote April 1, according to the panel’s Web site. Similar legislation has been introduced in the House by Representative Bruce Braley, an Iowa Democrat.

___

CBO report: http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/100xx/doc10070/s574.pdf

From: news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20090409/pl_bloomberg/ancxw4htzzseexternal link icon
Note: Article may no longer be available, or you may have to register or pay to read it.


Geithner calls for tougher standards on risk

March 26, 2009
Damian Paletta, Maya Jackson Randall and Michael R. Crittenden
wsj.com

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is calling for changes in how the government oversees risk-taking in financial markets, pushing for tougher rules on how big companies manage their finances as well as tighter controls on some hedge funds and money-market mutual funds.

"We need much stronger standards for openness, transparency, and plain, common sense language throughout the financial system," the secretary told the House Financial Services Committee Thursday morning*. "And we need strong and uniform supervision for all financial products marketed to consumers and investors, and tough enforcement of the rules to ensure full accountability for those who violate the public trust."

Mr. Geithner pressed the Obama administration's sweeping new plans for revamping U.S. financial regulations. Under the framework Treasury unveiled Thursday, the Obama administration is seeking to close regulatory gaps to better prevent shocks to the financial system, boost consumer and investor protection, improve international coordination and bring more, complex financial products under federal oversight.

From: online.wsj.com/article/SB123807231255147603.html#mod=WSJ_topics_obama?mod=rss_topics_obamaexternal link icon
Note: Article may no longer be available, or you may have to register or pay to read it.


Gobbledygook’s persistence

February 23, 2009
David Keene
The Hill

Few Americans remember him today, but Maury Maverick was a World War I hero and, for a time, a member of Congress. He later served as mayor of San Antonio, a job he lost when his opponents hinted darkly that he was a “communist fellow traveler” in a day when such hints had bite. He was an ardent New Dealer who returned to Washington at FDR’s request during World War II to run something called the United States Smaller War Plants Corporation.

Maury didn’t fit in all that well here, because he was at base a plain-spoken Texan. He came back to town at a time when government was a growth industry peopled by bureaucrats, technocrats and elitists who were proud of the fact few other than their peers could understand a word of what they were saying. The flood of legislation, regulations and unintelligible instructions that continues to this day had just begun, and Maury found himself spending more and more time trying to figure out what the bureaucrats in his own little agency were actually saying.

By early 1944 Maury had had enough. He wrote what The Washington Post at the time called “the most refreshing and … effective memo ever written in the Federal Service.”

This memo coined the word “gobbledygook,” used to describe the incomprehensible way government bureaucrats communicate their ideas to each other and their superiors — and, unfortunately, to the public, the ultimate target of their ideas. Maury instructed those working for him to “Stay off the gobbledygook language. It only fouls people up. For Lord’s sake, be short and say what you’re talking about … Anyone using the words ‘activation’ or ‘implementation’ will be shot.”

The Post reported that Maury had tried for several hours without success to understand a report written in “bureaucratese” by one of his assistants, threw the report down, grabbed his Dictaphone and dictated the memo. He told the reporter that, on finishing it, “I was relieved. I felt as though my soul had been cleansed. For years I have been confused and frustrated by this strange language that’s used around here.”

As usual, however, the Post was only partially right. Maury’s memo may stand as the most “refreshing” ever written, but the problem it was written to fix has since metastasized. Since that day, presidents have ordered bureaucrats to speak and write what has come to be known as “Plain English” and agencies have assembled task forces to comply with such orders, but government gobbledygook remains the language of the feds.

From: thehill.com/david-keene/gobbledygooks-persistence-2009-02-23.htmlexternal link icon
Note: Article may no longer be available, or you may have to register or pay to read it.


 
Search Articles by Category

All Articles

Business and Finance

Education, Literacy, and Culture

Health and Safety

Housing, Labor, Benefits

Humor

International

Law

Science, Technology, and Environment

US Government

Suggest News Articles

Plain Language Events

 
Home|About Us|Contact Us|Privacy and Other Policies|USA.gov|HowTo.gov|Usability.gov
 
Technical support for this website is provided by the Federal Aviation Administration
PLAIN develops and maintains the content of this site

Download Adobe Acrobat Reader.external link