AGA Today
A Push for Plain English
By
Stephen Barr
The Washington Post
Monday, October 29, 2007; D04
Gobbledygook. It's the stuff of government. Maybe its No. 1 export.
Now, a first-term House member, Bruce Braley (D-Iowa), wants to do away
with the wordy, pompous and confusing forms and memos that spew out of
the bureaucracy every day.
He
has introduced legislation that would require the government to write in
"plain language"—simple words, short sentences and no jargon, so that
people can understand tax forms, college aid applications and other
documents distributed to the public.
"Unless there is aggressive or intensive oversight, no agency is going
to change the way it does business," he said.
Braley is a lawyer and knows that lawyers generally get blamed for the
legalese in federal paperwork. He also knows that Congress is a factory
for gobbledygook.
He
developed a passion for plain language when he began practicing law in
1983, when the Iowa Supreme Court adopted easy-to-understand wording for
jury instructions, he said. Braley began talking it up with other
lawyers and writing on the topic.
Using plain language would improve services to the public, save time at
agencies spent on answering questions about what documents mean and make
it easier to hold agencies accountable for their work, Braley said.
A
local office of the Veterans Affairs Department rewrote a standard form
to make it more clear and the number of telephone calls into the office
about the form dropped from 1,200 to 200 a year, Braley said.
The innovations being carried out locally can be made to work at the
national level, he said. "We need to do a lot of education about
effective communication," Braley said. "In the past, that has not been a
priority in how the federal government does its work."
The bill suggests that an agency may achieve plain language by reading
the "Plain English Handbook," published by the Securities and Exchange
Commission, or the Federal Plain Language Guidelines.
To
avoid imposing a crushing paperwork burden on agencies, Braley's bill
would apply to future documents and would not require agencies to
rewrite old forms, letters, publications, notices and instructions.
The bill would not apply to federal regulations, which have been widely
criticized through the years for using muddled language. But previous
efforts to improve regulation writing have only partially succeeded,
because many regulations deal with politically sensitive issues and
sometimes are shaped by high-stakes lobbying in Congress and at the
White House. Backers may not want them to be too clear.
Braley acknowledged that his bill has received mixed reviews from fellow
House members. "I get positive feedback from some of my new colleagues,
who are reform-minded and think this makes sense," he said. "Others are
less excited."
Braley is not the first politician to make a push for clarity in
government publications. Al Gore made it a part of his "reinventing
government" project as vice president, and President Bill Clinton backed
up Gore's plain-language push with a 1998 memo directing agencies to
rethink how they write documents, including regulations.
Even though the Clinton-Gore initiative faded, some agencies have tried
to adopt plain-language techniques. They include the Veterans Benefits
Administration, the Interior Department, the National Institutes of
Health, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Securities and
Exchange Commission. "A plain English document uses words economically
and at a level the audience can understand. Its sentence structure is
tight. Its tone is welcoming and direct," according to the SEC handbook.
"We're waging an all-out war on complexity," SEC Chairman Christopher
Cox said in a speech at the Center for Plain Language this month. He
added, "We're dead serious about plain English."
Annetta Cheek, co-chairman of the nonprofit center, said, "We are firmly
convinced that the government could save time and money and provide
better customer service if it would just learn to write clearly." She
called Braley's bill a "great start" toward that goal.
Joanne Locke, chairman of the Plain Language Action and Information
Network, which sponsors monthly meetings for federal officials, said she
believes the legislation "can make a difference" by giving agencies a
green light to write with more clarity.
Braley has picked up almost 20 co-sponsors for the House bill, and
Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii), chairman of the Senate federal workforce
subcommittee, plans to introduce a similar version soon.
Senior citizens, veterans and taxpayers should be able to understand
public documents, Akaka said. "Filling out government forms should not
be like solving a complex crossword puzzle."
Falling Short on Smart Cards
Federal agencies missed this weekend's deadline for completing the first
phase of a "smart card" project designed to tighten access to federal
buildings and computer networks, the Office of Management and Budget
said.
Agencies were supposed to have completed background checks and issued
the new identification cards by Saturday to all employees with 15 years
or less of federal service, and to certain contractors. More than 1
million federal employees and 591,358 contract workers were affected.
As
of Friday, 97 percent of federal employees and 79 percent of contractors
had undergone background checks. But federal agencies have issued only 1
percent of the identification cards, which contain electronic chips
carrying personal data, including fingerprints.
"The milestone was to hit this, and we didn't, so we're holding
ourselves accountable," Karen Evans, who oversees government-wide
technology policies for the OMB, said Friday.
Under a presidential directive, agencies face an October 2008 goal to
get the cards into the hands of all federal employees and contractors
who need them to perform government work. Evans said she expected to see
a surge in the number of cards issued in the next few months.
The rollout of the new credential has been snagged by technical issues,
such as whether data were properly encoded on cards, the OMB said. Card
costs have dropped from $110 last year to $47 per card now, Evans said.
©
2007 The Washington Post Company