Plain Writing Act Compliance 

Annual Report 

April 13, 2012 

Dissemination 

In response to the Plain Writing Act of 2010, an action memorandum from the Executive 

Director for Operations instructed all managers to familiarize themselves with the requirements 

of the Act, and to encourage staff to take appropriate training. Staff are reminded to use plain 

language through periodic articles in the agency’s in-house newsletter, the NRC Reporter. The 

Commission has also directed staff to make greater use of plain language when speaking to the 

public about high profile events, such as the nuclear accident at Fukushima-Daiichi in Japan. 

Action Plan 

The NRC identified the following documents that should be the focus of plain writing: 

Performance Assessments, Generic Communications, Inspection Reports, and Significant 

Enforcement Actions. These are stored in the agency’s Agencywide Documents Access & 

Management System database and are accessible through the public web site and the Public 

Document Room in Rockville, MD. In cases where a document is necessarily technically 

complex, employees are instructed to provide a plain language cover memo or abstract. We are 

also considering focusing on the following items: Regulation Abstracts, Regulation Forwards, 

Information Papers, and Agency Policy Statements. 

Web site 

Consistent with the Act’s requirements, the NRC created a section of our public website that 

outlines our Plain Writing Action plan and also offers general guidance on plain writing at the 

NRC. This annual report (and all subsequent annual reports) will be posted there. 

Training 

The NRC already offered an online course, “Business Writing: How to Write Clearly and 

Concisely,” that was available to all staff. In response to the Act, the NRC created a new 

online course, specifically tailored to the Plain Writing guidance issued by the Office of 

Management and Budget, which all staff are encouraged to take. For employees who devote 

substantial time to writing documents read by the public, a more intensive 2-day instructor-led 

course, “Writing in Plain English,” is also offered. In the last twelve months, 349 staff have 

taken at least one of these courses. 

Stakeholder Feedback 

The NRC has a long-standing commitment to openness and transparency. Within the past 

year, the agency has implemented new subscription-based services on our public Web site to 

enable stakeholders to keep abreast of the most current agency news and activities. We’ve 

enhanced stakeholder involvement in public meetings by expanding the use of Web event and 

virtual meeting technologies, and furthered collaboration within industry and Government 

workgroups by using Web conferencing technologies. We have also introduced new interactive 

mechanisms for stakeholder engagement, including four successful social media technologies: 

the NRC Blog, a Twitter feed, a YouTube channel, and a Flickr photo gallery. The NRC blog 

has attracted 170,000 views and generated 1,000 approved comments, including comments on 

the readability of NRC documents. Currently, a new pilot project is being developed that will 

attach an interactive “widget” to some of the agency’s most widely read online documents, to 

gather additional feedback from stakeholders on the documents’ readability.