US Government

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.html
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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=451140
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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

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. ...

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.htm
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